Spotify's next trick could take a page from Pixel's Now Playing
Jul 23, 2026 — 4:02 PM ET
- Spotify appears to be working on a new tool for song identification.
- While it doesn’t work just yet, text strings in the app clearly allude to the functionality, including requests for microphone access.
- So far we’re only seeing this evidence on Android, but it’s likely the Spotify iOS app will offer something similar.
For a whole, whole lot of people, Spotify is our go-to destination for any and all things audio. That means music streaming, absolutely, but also access to podcasts and audiobooks, to say nothing of playlist tools for really customizing the experience. And while Spotify offers some great discovery features for finding new artists, what do you do when you’re looking for something in specific — you just don’t know what it’s called? It turns out, Spotify’s working on a solution for that, too.
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Smartphone users already have plenty of options for identifying songs, like the just-overhauled Now Playing for Pixel phones. If you’ve ever thought it’s a little odd that a music app like Spotify didn’t have its own song-ID solution built in, apparently you think a lot like Spotify developers, because they’re working on just such a feature right now.
Looking through some of the changes present in version 9.1.70.1086 of Spotify for Android, we’ve spotted some evidence that sure seems to point towards work on song identification:
<string name="identify_song_content_description">Identify a song</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_permission_denied">Microphone access is off. Turn it on in Settings to identify songs.</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_listening">Listening…</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_analyzing">Analysing…</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_cancel">Cancel</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_error_generic">Something went wrong. Please try again.</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_no_match">We couldn’t find a match</string>
<string name="audio_recognition_flow_retry">Try again</string>
While we’re not yet able to get any of this actually working in the app, even just going off those text strings alone, it seems perfectly clear what Spotfy’s up to here. We see direct references to song identification, the need to access your device’s microphone to sample audio, and error handling routines for when the song’s name can’t be determined.
Based on what we’ve found so far, there’s a good chance that Spotify will be adding a button for song ID up in the top-right of this Search screen, joining the camera.
So far we’ve only come across this evidence in Spotify’s Android app, but it seems likely that Spotify will bring the same functionality to its iOS app, as well. Like we said, it’s not like this is a feature that’s been missing from our lives or anything, but it’s also one that feels most useful when it’s connected to a music streaming solution like Spotify, letting us actually listen to a whole track after we ID it.
⚠️An
APK teardownhelps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.