CypherOS Announce Ambient Play, A Feature Similar To Pixel 2's Now Playing

CypherOS rolled out their first set of Oreo 8.1 based builds a couple of days back. At the time of release of CypherOS 5.1, the CypherOS team stated that they will be introducing new features in future updates. We now have a new feature in CypherOS, and this is something which might get you excited.

Last month, CarbonROM developer frap129 announced that he had managed to port Pixel 2's Now Playing feature to AOSP based ROMs for the Pixel 2. frap129 achieved this by reverse engineering a lot of proprietary Google code in Pixel Ambient Services (used for displaying recognised songs on Pixel 2's ambient display). It's important to note here that the ported Now Playing was only working on AOSP based ROMs for the Pixel 2 and not any other device. frap129 said he is working "as hard he can" to get the feature to work on other devices. Back then the ported Now Playing feature was in a "semi functioning state" on other devices, that is, the feature could "be enabled in Settings, but crashed when it detects a song."

Inspired by the work of CarbonROM, CypherOS' lead developer Chris Crump set out on getting a feature similar to Now Playing working on his device (I'm not sure which device Crump has, but it isn't a Pixel 2). Crump came across an open source music app Encore (built by FastMobile) which had music recognition built in. Crump managed to scrape out the code (out of Encore's source code on GitHub) responsible for music recognition in Encore and used that to build a music recognition feature into CypherOS. In the words of Crump,

Ambient Play is very similar to Google's Now Playing except it pulls the songs fingerprint from a third party database and compares it to the one grabbed from the audio recording. I rewrote it into our own service called Luna Ambient Services (A spin on Pixel Ambient Services)

Therefore I am proud to present this sneak peak of CypherOS's Ambient Play feature. You can be notified of songs played around you or the song you're currently playing on your device (Credits to Ezio and his Ambient Music Ticker).

This is not Now Playing. This is our own alternative in collaboration with FastMobile. So far I have it working perfectly with notifications, but I'm still working on the Ambient Display portion.

It isn't clear what happens when the notification is tapped upon.

Google's Now Playing functionality utilises an offline database to recognise songs playing in the surroundings. Apparently, Ambient Play will need access to the internet to recognise songs.

As stated by Crump, this feature is still being worked upon. Once completed, this feature will be released to the public and will be shipped in the official builds of CypherOS.

Source: Google+

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.