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Google Glass XE11 update includes support for Play Music

Last week, Google began rolling out the XE11 update to Glass Explorers, touting a host of new features, such as new voice commands, directions home, and much more. Oddly unannounced, however, was support for Google Play Music. As first discovered by Phandroid, Glass users who wish to enjoy their music with the device can side load the Play Music APK and control it via voice controls. Once the app is loaded, simply say “OK Glass, listen to,” then the name of a song, artist, album, or playlist. A card will then pop up with results and allow you to specify what to play. A new card also stays pinned for further music control, including Play, Stop, Skip, Rewind, and volume control.

The music plays through the device’s bone conduction speaker, which means quality might not be the best, but that should improve with the upcoming hardware revision of Glass with a built-in earpiece.

Instructions to side load the APK are relatively simple, though do involve some basic ADB usage:

  1. Download the latest Google Play Music APK here.
  2. Go to Glass Settings > Device Info and turn on debug mode. Connect Glass to your computer.
  3. Using the Android SDK, issue the command “adb install FILENAME.APK“, where “FILENAME” is the APK’s actual filename on your computer.
  4. Enjoy the tunes!

If this odd post from a Google employee is to believed, the company has been working on this feature for the past several months and plans to officially announce it soon.

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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Email: Chance@9to5mac.com

Chance currently writes for both 9to5Google and 9to5Mac, in addition to 9to5Toys.