Unlock this hidden iPhone feature to quickly identify songs

You come across a song, one you’ve never heard before, and you’re really feeling it, so of course you’re curious to know the song title and artist. Maybe you ask someone nearby if they know, or you search the texts, but if that’s not possible – you always have Shazam on yours iPhone.

While music identification apps are great for discovering new music, they aren’t really necessary to help you identify a song. In fact, your iPhone has a built-in feature known as Music Recognition, which is powered by Shazam, and allows you to quickly recognize songs directly from the Control Center, without having to download anything.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up the feature, use it to identify music and find all the songs you recognize, which for some reason end up hidden on your iPhone.

Set up your iPhone’s music recognition feature

Before you can use the music recognition feature, you must first enable it. Go to on iPhone Settings > Control center and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Under More controlsyou should see Music recognition. Tap the green plus sign next to it and it will add the button to your Control Center.

Recognize songs quickly on iPhone

To use Shazam’s built-in music recognition on iPhone (it also works with iPad), simply swipe down from the top right on iPhone to access Control Center — or swipe up from the bottom of the screen on devices with a home button — and Press Music recognition.

The music recognition button will turn white and you will see a notification at the top of the screen saying Shazam music recognition: Onwhich means Shazam is listening for music (you may also see an orange LED light on newer iPhone models, indicating that your microphone is on).

After a few seconds, the feature should tell you the song name and artist if it recognizes a song (you won’t see anything if it doesn’t). You will see more information in a small notification that only appears for a few seconds at the top of the screen. Tapping it will redirect you to the Shazam App Clip, which is a bite-sized version of the full app, so you don’t need to download anything from the App Store.

Unfortunately, unlike the Shazam app, the App Clip version doesn’t save your songs recognized by the built-in music recognition feature. Instead, if you go back to the App Clip or even the entire Shazam application, you won’t find any information.

So where are all your songs recognized by the built-in music recognition feature?

How to find the hidden songs IDedd of your iPhone

Just like when using music recognition, swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen to access the Control Center, but instead of pressing the Shazam button, hold and tap for a long second or so.

A music recognition feature window will appear, showing your entire hidden history of songs recognized by Shazam through the built-in Music ID feature. The number of songs is displayed at the top right, and you can scroll down the list to see all your songs, with the most recently recognized songs at the top.

Tapping a song will open it in the Shazam app clip. Here you have the option to play a preview of the song, open it in the music player of your choice, and see other top songs from the artist, the featured album, similar songs and more.

Pretty simple, right? If you’re looking for other lesser-known features on your iPhone, check out ours iOS 15 hidden features you didn’t know you needed. You can also read our iOS 15 review, in case you haven’t updated yet. And if you want to upgrade your iPhone, you can learn more about which model might be best for you.