How to use Shazam on your iPhone and iPad

Shazam is a fantastic music recognition app that’s available across all Apple devices. Here’s how to use it on the iPhone and iPad:

Launch Shazam.

Tap the Shazam button to identify the tune playing. 

You can find songs you’ve identified in My Music in the Shazam app. Songs you’ve identified are also backed up to iCloud.

After you ID a song, tap the play button next to a Shazam to listen to a preview. If you have an Apple Music subscription, you can listen to whole songs in Shazam. 

If you don’t have an Internet connection, the app still creates a unique digital fingerprint to match against the Shazam database the next time your device is connected to the internet. If a song can’t be identified, it will disappear from your pending Shazams.

Identify songs in Control Center on iPhone or iPad

With Music Recognition on iPhone or iPad, you can identify songs right from Control Center. To add Music Recognition to Control Center, go to Settings > Control Center, then tap the Add button next to Music Recognition — that is, as long as you’re using iOS 14.2or iPad OS 14.2 or later.

To identify songs, open Control Center, then tap the Shazam button. Shazam can identify songs playing on your device even when you’re using headphones.

To find songs you’ve identified, touch and hold the Shazam button in Control Center to open your History View. Tap a song to open it in Shazam.

Using Auto Shazam

One of my favorite features is the ability too have Shazam automatically identify what’s playing around you by touching and holding g the Shazam button. When Auto Shazam is on, Shazam matches what you’re hearing with songs in the Shazam database—even when you switch to another app. Shazam never saves or stores what it hears.

To turn off Auto Shazam, tap or click the Shazam button.

To have Shazam automatically start listening when you open the app on iPhone or iPad, swipe up to My Music from the main Shazam screen, tap the Settings button, then turn on “Shazam on app start.”

You can find songs identified with Auto Shazam in My Music, grouped together by date.

(This how-to is based on my experiences and info on Apple’s support pages.)