Google Play Pixel Now Playing has been ported to other Android devices

Google debuted the Now Playing feature with the Pixel 2 series in 2018 and has remained an integral part of the Pixel range ever since. The feature uses a combination of Google’s hardware, software and machine learning magic to identify the songs playing in the background. Now, the game was meant to be an exclusive Pixel feature, but it was only a matter of time before custom ROM developers managed to make it work based on an AOSP code base and come up with their own approach. of the function.

Now, XDA-recognized developer / Recognized Contributor Quinny899 has taken things a step further. It came with an Xposed and Magisk hybrid mode called “Ambient Music Mod” which fully carries the original Google Play Now feature on other Android smartphones. It’s free and open-source and has been confirmed to work on some OnePlus devices, such as the OnePlus 7T Pro.

As with Google Pixel phones, Ambient Music Mod allows your phone to automatically recognize music playing in your surroundings and display the name of the song and artist currently playing on the lock screen. The function also keeps a historical list of each identified song, so you can return to viewing them whenever you want. While some of the previous re-implementations of Now Playing relied on an active Internet connection to do its job, Ambient Music Mod processes everything locally, on the device, and therefore does not require Internet or battery usage. After all, it’s a full-featured port on Google Pixel phones, so it works pretty much the same way it works on these devices.

Features Ambient Music Mod

• Full support for ambient music, including downloading the latest Google Music Recognition databases when your device is idle or in use (exclusions apply, see FAQ for more details)
• Now built-in playback history and support for third-party history applications
• Ability to display the current track currently playing on the lock screen using an accessibility overlay service
• Manual on-demand recognition in the Ambient Music Mod app
• Amplification control settings, how often recognition should be triggered, if it runs on small processor cores, and what to do when a song recognition notification is reached
• View all recognized songs from the locally downloaded database using the Song List option

As previously mentioned, Ambient Music Mod is a hybrid mode of Xposed and Magisk, which means you will need both frames installed on your phone. Magisk is required to gain root access to your device, while the Xposed framework allows the mode to connect to the Sound Trigger driver of Qualcomm Snapdragon devices.

Your phone must also have a Snapdragon processor with support for Sound Trigger 2.1 or higher. The mode relies on the Sound Trigger service (the same service used by voice assistants to activate voice) to listen to music played in your surroundings and captures an 8-second audio recording. The application then runs a K-Near Neighbor (KNN) machine learning model on this small audio clip to find the exact matches in a locally stored song database.

How to download Ambient Music Mod on your device:

1. Make sure your device has a bootloader unlocked with Magisk and Xposed * frames installed. (See our Magisk and Xposed installation guides)
2. Download the latest Ambient Music mode APK from the developer’s GitHub page.
3. The app will run some tests to see if your device is compatible or not.
4. If your device meets the requirements, click the “Build Installer” button at the bottom.
5. Once built, open the Magisk Manager application and install the module.
6. Open the Xposed application, search for the Ambient Music Mod and activate it.
7. Restart the device. You should see information about the song on the lock screen the next time you listen to music in the background.

Ambient music mode displays the currently playing track on the lock screen of a OnePlus 7T Pro running Oxygen OS 11.

The developer did a lot of testing this way and came up with a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that you should check here if you have any questions or issues. Frequently asked questions answer questions such as how to test whether Now Playing works, how many songs it recognizes, what to do when you see a “Pixel Ambient Services” update on Google Play (spoiler: don’t update), what boost level to use and more.

While the developer can confirm that the feature works on a rooted OnePlus 7T Pro running OxygenOS 11, a tester reports that it failed to run on the ASUS ROG Phone 3 running ZenUI. Thus, your mileage may vary. To provide feedback to developers, see the XDA forum thread for Ambient Music Mod at the link below.

Ambient Music Mod – The XDA theme for the Pixel ambient music port

* It is important to note that the original developer of the Xposed Framework has not supported the project since its release compatible with Android 8.1 Oreo. When the developer (and others on our forums) mention Xposed, it refers to the unofficial successors of the Xposed Framework that are compatible with Android versions 9 to 12. These successors include “EdXposed” and more recently “LSPosed”, both offering a ART frame. These frames also require the installation of “Riru”, which modifies the process of the Android zygote to allow the modules to run their own code. You don’t need to know how they work, but you need at least a combination of Magisk + Riru + EdXposed or Magisk + Riru + LSPosed installed to run Ambient Music Mod.