Shazam for Android has updated the home screen widget. With it, you can now identify the music playing around you without even launching the app.
- What is happening? Apple has released version 3.17 of Shazam for Android with an updated widget that lets you identify music without leaving your home screen.
- Why care? The Shazam widget in older versions of the app was just a shortcut to launch the app. You couldn’t shazam a song directly from the home screen.
- What to do? Update your copy of Shazam [ Play Store link ] to get the new widget.
Shazam a song directly from the Android home screen
A new widget redesigned for the Google Material You style in Android 12 and 13 with support for Dynamic Color themes makes it easy to start a listening session.
A quick tap on the Tap to Shazam widget button will immediately start the listening process in the background. If there is a match, you will see the song, artist, and album art displayed in your Shazam widget.
You’ll also get a Shazam notification that will let you quickly share the song. Again, this process in no way requires the user to interact with the application itself.
This widget is less of a hindrance to quick and easy song identification when you don’t want to quit what you’re doing. You can make a quick id and then dive into it another time with an alert in the notification shade.
The updated widget has become more spacious (5×1) than before (1×1), and can now occupy the entire screen. Read: How to Shazam Play Music on Your iPhone
Will the Shazam widget for iOS become more useful?
With this update, Shazam has one cool feature that the iOS version doesn’t have, a much more useful widget. This is especially interesting because Shazam is owned by Apple, which isn’t surprising given the non-interactive nature of iOS widgets.
On iOS, widgets act as shortcuts to specific sections in their app. The iOS widget displays snippets of information, but touching any section of the widget will instantly take you to the widget app. So, for example, the Gmail widget won’t let you delete a message or mark all messages as read without opening the Gmail app.
On Android, home screen widgets are a bit more useful, so Shazam for Android can identify the music and show you the result without actually opening the app.
On the other hand, owning Apple has some advantages. For example, Shazam is ubiquitous via Siri on Apple devices. And by adding Shazam to your iPhone’s Control Center, you’ll be able to identify the music that’s playing in apps, headphones, and so on.
Currently, the Shazam widget for iOS is not interactive and only displays recently found songs. It probably won’t get any smarter until a future iOS update introduces more interactivity for widgets.