If Your Updated Pixel Is Glitchy, Try These Workarounds

If you're having trouble swiping around your Pixel, or using the on-screen navigation buttons, you're not alone. It seems with last week's Android 16 update, Google inadvertently introduced a bug for some Pixel users, which now makes it difficult to get around their brand-new version of Android—no matter which navigation method they're using.

As Android Headlines reports, the complaints have been rolling onto social media sites and forums, like X and Reddit. Some claim navigation buttons on their Pixels have become totally unresponsive, while others experience delays around 30 seconds (if not longer) any time they try to hit a button. Still others have issues with navigation gestures—Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii highlights how swiping back, which should take the user back to the previous page or app, will just randomly do nothing.

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To be clear, it doesn't appear that this is a bug affecting most Pixel users running Android 16. In fact, some users in these Reddit threads confirm their Pixels running Android 16 are working as expected. One user even says they've had the opposite experience, that their Pixel 9 Pro XL feels "super smooth," in response to a Pixel 6 owner who says their device is now unusable.

Still, this is a huge pain for anyone who owns a phone with the glitch. Don't get me wrong: There was a time when we were primed to wait 30 seconds or more after asking our computers to perform a function. But those days have long passed. Modern smartphones especially are designed to be fast, fluid, and responsive. Even a short delay between an input and its corresponding action feels like a bad user experience, so painfully slow delays, not to mention a totally unresponsive UI, is unacceptable in 2025.

Troubleshooting navigation issues on Pixel

There's no official fix for this issue at this time. However, after scrolling through forum posts, I see some workarounds to troubleshoot the issue and get your Pixel working again.

The original poster of this Reddit thread, for example, later commented to share that switching their Android launcher fixed the glitches. The OP moved back to the Pixel launcher from Nova, which surprised them, since they had been using Nova for the past decade without issue. One reply says they have a similar problem when using Nova.

While this could be a compatibility issue with Nova and Android 16, it does seem to go beyond Nova itself. Another Pixel owner using Pixel Launcher has the same problems, and shared their workaround: First, pull down on the navigation bar twice to access the settings button in the bottom right. Then, head to Apps > All apps > Pixel Launcher, then choose "Force stop."

Could this be a general issue with launchers on Android 16? Possibly, but we won't know for sure until Google officially addresses the issue. The official PixelCommunity Reddit account did reach out to one OP about the problem, so hopefully the company pushes a patch out quickly.