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‘Now Playing History’ remembers the music recognized by your Pixel 2 long after it’s gone

One of the flagship features that arrived with the Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL is something called Now Playing. When turned on, Now Playing identifies songs playing in the background automatically and lists the song’s name and artist on your lockscreen. Unfortunately, though, when that information disappears from your screen, it’s gone forever. ‘Now Playing History’ fixes this problem…

Just introduced onto the Google Play Store, Now Playing History is a relatively simple application. Once installed, whenever your Google Pixel 2 identifies a song, it is added to an ongoing list. This is perfect for those who either don’t have a chance to look at their phones when the handset identifies a song or when they want to look back at that one song they heard yesterday while at the coffee shop.

When you first install and launch Now Playing History, the application asks for permission to access your notifications. This is required so that the app can read the information provided by the actual Now Playing feature when it identifies a song.

In my experience, it took a decent amount of time (sometimes close to a minute) before a song would populate in the app. Additionally, you can jump into Now Playing History’s settings menu and select a default music player to launch when you tap on a song title. Currently, you can choose from Google Play Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

Download Now Playing History for $0.99 from the Play Store


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Avatar for Justin Duino Justin Duino

I’m a writer for 9to5Google with a background in IT and Android development. Follow me on Twitter to read my ramblings about tech and email me at justin@jaduino.com. Tips are always welcome.