Pixel Now Playing starts rolling out a song-specific visual upgrade

Pixel phones have long had one of Android’s coolest music tricks built in. The Now Playing feature constantly listens for songs around you and identifies them right on your lock screen — like an always-on Shazam. With the Android 16 QPR3 update, Google appears to be rolling out a refreshed version of that experience that finally brings album art into the mix.

With the new interface, Now Playing still begins as the familiar transparent text card showing the detected song and artist. But tapping the card now expands it into a full Now Playing bar on the lock screen, where you can see the album artwork for the track that’s been identified. In our testing, the panel initially loads with a plain white background before the album art appears a moment later. You can see the before and after shots of it in action above.

That loading behavior doesn’t seem entirely consistent just yet. While many tracks eventually populate with their artwork, some remain stuck with a white background rather than displaying the album image. The images below show one such example of this failure.

It seems that this new lockscreen artwork addition has been in the works for some time. Back in July 2025, we spotted Google experimenting with the feature behind the scenes, where tapping the lock screen card would expand it to reveal album art rather than immediately opening the Now Playing history page.

The rollout also comes just days after Google launched the Now Playing feature as a standalone app on the Play Store, rather than only bundling it into Android System Intelligence. The underlying music recognition still works the same way, but the appearance and tools continue to evolve as Google refines one of Pixel’s most distinctive features.