this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Google's "Now playing" feature constantly listens to what's going on in the background to show you what songs are playing. They claim this is done with a local database of song "fingerprints". The feature does not show the microphone indicator because: "...Now Playing is protected by Android's Private Compute Core..."
I'm not saying that other, non-google, app do this to my knowledge; but the fact that this is a thing is honestly a bit scary.
Edit: screenshot of the "Now Playing" feature
For what it's worth, I did just test it with airplane mode and it still correctly identified the song playing. So at the very least, it's not lying about using a local database to identify songs, at least when it is offline.
It also uses a cloud fingerprint database apparently according to the second paragraph:
Oh, I didn't notice this, my apologies. Turning on identify songs nearby reveals two new options, notifications and show search button. That show search button option must be new; I had identify nearby music on already since my last phone. Guess they added something new. My bad.
I have seen said feature being mentioned or brought to other android versions whether with apps or modules, do they work the same way?
I'm not sure how other apps or android versions work. This is a flaw with the closed source software ecosystem.
The thing is I really can't see Google allowing anyone else access. They don't even allow Android OEMs to have access
if this is used, or there is some whitelist that gives permission for background microphone use in voice interaction services, apps with tracking capabilities probably use some set of predefined keywords (hardcoded inside the app itself) and those can be triggered while being on standby/in background, when there is a match some pinging goes to outside servers...