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@github-actions github-actions released this 10 Nov 04:22
v0.0.1
9d0f8f5

🎵 Now Playing Companion v0.0.1 — Initial Release

Welcome to the very first release of Now Playing Companion!

Now Playing Companion brings Pixel's ambient Now Playing song recognition to your Wear OS watch. When your phone recognizes a song playing nearby, it shows up on your wrist within moments.

Your privacy comes first:

  • 🔐 No accounts
  • 🌐 No backend or cloud services
  • 📊 No analytics
  • 🎙️ No microphone access
  • 📱 Songs go straight from your phone to your watch over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi

✨ What's Included

⌚ Wrist Alerts

A quiet notification when a new song is heard nearby, with an Open on phone action right in the alert.

Choose how it feels:

  • 🪶 Subtle
  • 📳 Prominent
  • 💓 Heartbeat
  • 🔇 Mute

🧩 Tile

Swipe to the Now Playing tile to see the current (or last heard) song, with a one-tap Open on phone button.

🕐 Watch Face Complications

Show the song title on your watch face:

  • 🔹 Short Text
  • 🔸 Long Text (title + artist)

Complications only update when a song arrives. They are never polled.

📜 History

Recently recognized songs on both watch and phone.

  • 👆 Tap to open a song
  • 👈 Swipe to remove it

📲 Open on Phone

Send any song from your watch to your phone and open it in:

  • ▶️ YouTube Music
  • 🟢 Spotify
  • 🔍 Google Search

📱 Phone App

The companion phone app reads the Now Playing notification and passes each song to your watch.

  • ✅ Setup status at a glance: notification access and watch connection
  • 🧪 Send test button to check that alerts reach your wrist
  • 📜 Full song history with tap-to-open and swipe-to-remove

🔋 Battery Friendly

Built to stay out of the way of your battery:

  • New songs reach your watch right away. "Song ended" updates are batched so they don't wake the watch's radio.
  • The tile and complications refresh only when something actually changes.
  • On Android 12+, the phone app ignores chat and messaging notifications.
  • Small download: about 1.1 MB for the phone app and 3.1 MB for the watch app.

🔒 Privacy First

Now Playing Companion is built with privacy in mind.

  • No accounts
  • No cloud services
  • No analytics
  • No crash reporting SDKs
  • No microphone access. Recognition is done by your Pixel's own Now Playing feature.

Your song history is kept out of cloud backups. It can still move to a new device in a direct device-to-device transfer.

Permissions used:

  • Notification access (phone) to read the Now Playing notification. Nothing else is stored or forwarded.
  • Notifications & vibration (watch) to show song alerts.

📋 Requirements

  • 📱 A Pixel phone running Android 8.0 (API 26) or newer, with Now Playing turned on
    (Settings → Sound & vibration → Now Playing)
  • ⌚ A Wear OS 3+ watch paired to that phone
  • Install the phone app and the watch app. Both must come from the same release, because they need to share the same signing key.

Sideloading on Android 13+? Before you can grant notification access, go to
Settings → Apps → Now Playing Companion → ⋮ → Allow restricted settings.

📦 Downloads

  • Phone AAB: Google Play Store distribution
  • Phone APK: install directly on your phone
  • Watch AAB: Google Play Store distribution (Wear OS track)
  • Watch APK: install directly on your watch

Thank you for trying Now Playing Companion! ❤️

This is just the beginning, with more features and improvements already planned for future releases.

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