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Summary
- A peculiar wallpaper bug on some Pixels running Android 15 and 16 beta shows visual glitches during wallpaper selection.
- The bug is frustrating, considering that users cannot reliably switch between recent wallpapers in the Pixel Wallpaper & style menu.
- Google has been contacted about this issue, and updates will be provided as they become available.
A peculiar wallpaper bug is currently plaguing some of our Pixels, and it is affecting devices running stable Android 15 as well as Android 16 beta.
Normally, the Pixel Wallpaper & style menu offers a very consistent experience, allowing users to quickly switch between their five most recently applied, with additional ones nested within a subsequent menu. Currently, though, the initial selection of five wallpapers is what seems to be broken.
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I can easily switch between the first three wallpapers on the menu, but trying to select any of the latter two promptly pushes me back to the wallpaper I was previously on. Android Police News Editor, Dallas Thomas, on the other hand, can not select any wallpaper other than the one that is currently selected.
I can’t get any of those to work, even the second and third ones just push me back to the one that’s already selected.
Words can only convey so much — check out the GIF below for visual reference
Upon further digging, we found that despite the visual feedback suggesting that the wallpaper change failed, that’s not really the case. Every time a selection visually failed, the system did actually apply the new wallpaper, essentially causing a disconnect between the UI and the actual state.
Making matters worse, if we try to set the ‘original’ wallpaper back, the system thinks the ‘original’ is still the current wallpaper and doesn’t respond when it’s selected. Subsequently, when you exit the menu and reopen it, the ‘correct’ one is ticked and highlighted, and that’s when you can re-select the original wallpaper.
We’re seeing this across Pixel 9 and Pixel 8 devices running the latest Android 15 stable build and Android 16 beta. Oddly, our Pixel 7 seems to be unaffected.
We’ve reached out to Google regarding the issue, and we’ll update this article if and when we hear back.
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