• Pixel’s Now Playing feature acts as a better version of Shazam for Pixel devices, automatically detecting tracks.

• With Android 15, however, users are facing issues with the tool’s manual search button disappearing on the lock screen.

• Google is aware of the issue but has not yet released a fix.

If you’re frustrated that the Now Playing tool on your Pixel device isn’t working as expected, you are not alone.

Google Pixel Exclusive Now Playing functionalitywhich was first introduced in 2017, is essentially a better version of Shazam built into your Pixel device. It automatically detects songs playing in your environment and stores them in the Now playing history so you can check.

In some cases, if Now Playing fails to automatically detect music, tapping the tool’s magnifying glass icon on the lock screen triggers your phone to send relevant audio information to Google for identify the song playing in your environment. With Android 15, the manual search tool seems to have encountered an issue.

The most common problem users reported is the disappearance of the magnifying glass search icon (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) from the lock screen, making the tool useless if the Pixel device cannot automatically detect music playing around the user.

In our own experience, with early Android 15 betas, toggling the feature on and off seemed to temporarily bring back the manual lock screen finder, but that’s no longer the case with Android 15 stable, force some to go as far as downloading Shazam.

Google is aware of the problem

For me, the feature works well when it recognizes music in the background, but no matter what I try, I can’t get the manual search button to appear on the lock screen when the device cannot automatically detect the music being played.

Turning Now Playing on and off does not fix the issue, and the same goes for turning Now Playing on or off. Show search button on lock screen. For reference, the latter still says “identify songs playing nearby that are not recognized by your device” in its description with the magnifying glass icon next to it, which means Google hasn’t fundamentally changed the way whose tool works with Android 15.

The disappearance of the manual search tool isn’t the only problem, however. Users also reported the magnifying glass icon and the song title identified swinging to the left, although this doesn’t seem to be as common as the main problem.

Google has not yet deployed a patch, although it is informed of one, as suggested in a IssueTracker Report. “Thanks for reporting this issue. We have a fix to roll out in a future release,” a Google developer commented in late July. It should be noted that the feature is powered by Google. Android system intelligence app, which means that repairing it should not warrant a full system update.