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NowPlayingExporterPy

NowPlayingExporterPy (1)

Exports the Now Playing history (Android System Intelligence, ASI) from Google Pixel devices to CSV, and adds a function to download the songs listed in that history (via yt-dlp) to the app's storage. Designed and built as a Project-Based Learning (PBL) project.

⚠️ Requires root. The ASI database is private to the system. Grant superuser permissions (Magisk / KernelSU / aPatch) before using it. To browse the resulting files, a root manager may be required.

Features

  • ✅ CSV export of "Now Playing" history.
  • ✅ Smart deduplication (time windows) to clean up duplicates and "false repeats."
  • ✅ Download songs from CSV with yt-dlp to the app's private directory (no storage permissions required).
  • ✅ Minimalist UI with real-time progress feedback.

📁 Paths and Formats

  • ASI DB (common examples):
/data/data/com.google.android.as/databases/history_db
/data/user_de/0/com.google.android.as/databases/history_db
/data/data/com.google.android.as.oss/databases/history_db
  • CSV Output: in Downloads (MediaStore) with the name now_playing_export_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS[_dedup].csv.
  • Audio Downloads (with yt-dlp):
/Android/data/com.d4vram.nowplayingexporterpy/files/Music/NPEpy_download_songs/

Typical format: .webm (no FFmpeg post-processing). To listen to them on your player, move/copy them to /sdcard/Music/.

🚀🔍 How it works (technical summary)

  1. Root (libsu) copies history_db from ASI to the app sandbox.
  2. Chaquopy (Python) runs np_export.py to read SQLite and generate the temporary CSV.
  3. (Optional) np_dedupe.py applies deduplication per time window.
  4. The app saves the final CSV in Downloads and offers sharing via standard intent.
  5. With the CSV ready, yt-dlp searches for and downloads the audio files to the app's private folder.

📋 Requirements

  • Root (Magisk / KernelSU Next / aPatch).
  • ASI installed (Android System Intelligence).
  • Tested on Android 16 (Pixel with KernelSU Next). Android 12–15 compatibility expected on Pixel (not guaranteed).

Lessons learned ✍️ (issues → solutions)

  1. FFmpeg & yt-dlp: Chaquopy does not provide FFmpeg via pip. yt-dlp can download native audio (.webm) without FFmpeg, so the false dependency was removed and “best audio” was configured.
  2. Real-time progress: Added a PythonCallback interface from Kotlin to receive logs/status from the Python script and display them in the UI.
  3. DNS/intermittent network: In addition to declaring android.permission.INTERNET, retries with pauses and a “long pause” after N downloads were implemented.
  4. Scoped Storage (API 29+): Writing to public Music results in Operation not permitted. Workaround: Use private app storage in /Android/data/.../files/ (no permissions required on Android 10+).

🚀 Usage

  1. Install the APK.
  2. Grant root when prompted.
  3. Click Export to generate the CSV of the history.
  4. (Optional, recommended) Enable Deduplication.
  5. Click Download songs to populate NPEpy_download_songs/.

Important tip for good readability: Open the CSV in a spreadsheet without breaking columns

To prevent your titles from being "chopped up" by spaces, click exactly this:

In Separator Options

✅ Comma

⛔ Space → UNCHECK

⛔ Semicolon → UNCHECK

⛔ Tab → UNCHECK (leave it alone if your file has tabs)

In String Delimiter → choose " (double quotes).

Character Set → Unicode (UTF-8) (as you already have).

(Recommended) In the preview, click on the header of the timestamp_iso column (and any other time column) and set the Column Type to Text so it doesn't reinterpret it as a strange date.

Then click OK. With that, the preview should go from single words in a thousand columns to clean columns: artist | title | timestamp_iso | ...

👉 If everything still looks broken, open the file in an editor and look at the actual separator:

If you see ; between fields, import by selecting a semicolon (and unselecting the rest).

If you see ,, use a comma as above.

⚙️ Architecture and Technologies

  • Kotlin (Android): UI + main logic.
  • Chaquopy (Python): script execution (np_export.py, np_dedupe.py, np_download.py).
  • yt-dlp: audio search/download.
  • libsu: root operations.
  • SQLite: ASI database.
  • Scoped Storage: access policies on Android 10+.

🛠️ Build

Android Studio

  • Open the project and Sync.
  • Build > Make Project or Run.

⌨️ CLI

git clone <URL_REPO>
cd NowPlayingExporterPy
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug
# APK in: app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk