Shazam is one of those “lifetime” apps, which have been present in our smartphones… wow, practically since the first time we had smartphones. Not for nothing, as we told you last year when we commemorated 20 years of this service, his was one of the applications available in the iOS App Store from the first day of its existence. This explains why it is strange to meet someone who does not know about their existence and functions.

But he is not so popular just because of his senior age, the key to its success is its usefulness. Practically all of us have, on many occasions, heard a song that we like but cannot identify at the time. Either because we didn’t know him, or because he is familiar to us but his metadata resists us, it can be a rather frustrating situation indeed. Before, you had to turn to the people around you and trust that someone can clear your doubts, but since the arrival of Shazam, everything has become much easier.

However, it happens that in certain circumstances we cannot use Shazam to identify a song, and one of the most common cases is the one that occurs when the content is played on the same iPhone on which we use the application. Of course, we always have the option of using a second device to play the content, but this makes the process less practical and also impossible if we don’t have a second device.

I started the previous paragraph by speaking in the present tense, when really I should have done it in the preterite, and it is Shazam already allows the identification of content that is played on the same device, as we can see in the notes for the latest app update in the iOS store. At the moment, the feature is compatible with Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, but due to how it works, it is expected that its scope can be expanded in the future, making it even more useful. Not as much, of course, as the floating mode feature that lets you use Shazam from any compatible app on Android.

In order to use this feature on iOS you need to make sure you have version 15.36 (or later) of Shazam. Its operation is very simple, just open Shazam, press the identification button, then switch to the application where the content is located and play it as usual. Within a few seconds, you will see a microphone icon in the top bar, and if the identification is positive, the information will appear at the top of the screen shortly after, and will also be added to the application’s results log.