Google may be removing this beloved Pixel Buds Pro feature

Lil Katz / Android Authority

Modern earbuds are so much more than just tiny speakers perched in our ears, and the good ones offer numerous ways to directly interact with our phones, from music playback controls, to those connected to virtual assistants. The original Pixel Buds Pro are a couple years old at this point, but have still been holding up great — at least, so far. But now it looks like Google could be removing one of the key ways these earbuds let users control their phones.

Over the past couple days, Reddit users like hintze85 and fakeaccountt12345 have been sharing reports that their Buds have lost the ability to read notifications by pressing and holding on the earbud’s side (via 9to5Google). And lest we write this off as a glitch, some of these users report hearing an audio message informing them that “touch and hold wont read notifications anymore.”

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

What’s bizarre is that you’re still able to hear your notifications, but just no longer able to access them in this way. Instead, affected users need to speak their request aloud to Assistant. And while that works in a pinch, it’s a heck of a lot less graceful when you’re trying to be slightly more discreet.

We’ve heard some theories for why Google could be altering this behavior, and the best guesses at the moment are tied to the forthcoming release of the Pixel Buds Pro 2 and Google’s increasing focus on Gemini. Even with that in mind, this change still feels like a step backward, and none of the Pixel Buds users we’ve seen talking about it online seem very pleased with the decision.

Android Authority has reached out to Google to see if the company can shed some light on this situation, and we’ll update this post with anything new we learn.

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