After launching in early March, Google has released the first update to its new Now Playing app for Pixel phones.
As of Friday, version 2026.03.24.x (versus 2026.03.02.x) is widely available via Google Play. It’s been slowly rolling out over the past few days.
We haven’t noticed any obvious changes after updating, so this is presumably a behind-the-scenes bug fixer. Google did not update the “What’s new” release notes in the Play Store listing.
Some have reported seeing the Now Playing icon followed by “Tap to see what’s playing” underneath the fingerprint icon on the lockscreen. It’s reminiscent of the previous version’s ability to trigger an online search if your Pixel recognized a song was playing, but could not identify it using the on-device database.
The redesign offers a lockscreen shortcut (as seen below) and Quick Settings Tile as alternatives. (That latter option — in the 2×1 size — also replaces the silent notification identifying what’s currently playing.)
Not all users are seeing this and we haven’t been able to replicate this across several phones. One possibility is that “Tap to see what’s playing” is a prompt to inform users that tapping the icon when a song name and artist appears lets them quickly favorite a song and open their music app, as well as see cover art.
Hopefully, more substantial upgrades are coming in the future. First-party apps usually see big updates alongside Pixel Drops every three months.
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