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.
Top comment by android2288214
I got the update 3 days ago but the tap to see what's playing started working last night, so seems to be a server side update. I also noticed the quick tile, but it's not the same thing as regular notification. It doesn't change right away, so if you swipe down to look at it, it will either still show the previous song or say now playing but will eventually change. I tested this by making sure the song was identified on my lock screen already and checked the quick tile and saw it had not changed yet. Also, the quick tile has to be the full size one, because if it's small it is useless, it won't show the name and if you tap it to identify the song, it will vibrate when done but you can't see anything lol.
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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