Identify Song
Find what is playing in the room, not on this computer, and put lyrics to it.
Every other part of 9xLyrics reads what your computer is playing. Identify Song listens to the room instead: a speaker, a car, a café, the radio, a film. It recognises the track and then shows its lyrics like any other song.
Open it from the tray's Identify song…, from the Lyrics Window's More › Identify song…, or from a shortcut you assign.
Identify Song is free. The Pro gates on overlays and appearance still apply to whatever it hands over.
It only listens while you ask
Nothing runs in the background and nothing is recorded between attempts. The microphone is live while the window says Listening, and stops the moment there is a match, an error, a Cancel, a closed window, or the built-in deadline.
Listen automatically when opened starts a listen as soon as the window opens. It is off by default.
A match
The cover, title and artist, and the window taking its colours from the artwork.
- Show lyrics hands the match to the rest of the app: the Lyrics Window opens on it, and your overlays follow it as they would any song. Reopening Identify then offers Stop showing in overlays.
- Listen again tries once more — worth it if the timing drifted.
- View on Shazam opens the track's Shazam page.
The transport controls are disabled for a recognised song, and a chip reads Shazam · estimated timing or Shazam · untimed. Nothing is playing on this computer, so there is nothing to pause or seek.
Timing is estimated from where Shazam heard the music, so clicking a line later still lands in the right place. It is not exact: microphone delay, network time and a speaker running slightly fast are not corrected for. Listen again resyncs.
macOS asks you to set something up once
macOS recognition goes through Shortcuts, using Apple's own Shazam integration. The first time, the window shows Set up recognition:
- Add shortcut installs
9xLyrics Identify Song. - Answer the macOS permission prompts.
- Check setup confirms it.
It is a one-time step. Windows and Linux have nothing to install — recognition is built in.
On macOS, cancelling stops 9xLyrics listening but is not proven to stop macOS's own recognition service. If Shortcuts is still listening after a cancel, stop it there.
When it fails
The window keeps the listening layout and says what went wrong: the microphone is off or busy, there is no microphone, no match was found, Shazam is rate limiting, or there is no connection. Try again retries; on macOS, Open Shortcuts is offered as well.
Recognition goes to the same unofficial Shazam endpoint other open-source tools use. It can rate-limit or change without notice.