Why Pixel 6 Users Should Turn Off Google Photos’ Automatic Updates Right Now
Reading Time: 2 minutesIt appears a botched server-side update broke Google Photos’ Magic Eraser tool on Pixel 6 devices.
The Pixel 6 is Google’s best smartphone yet, but the early months of its life have been a buggy mess, and users report yet another instability affecting the Google Photos app. Following the latest app update, some users experience crashes when using the Magic Eraser tool in Google Photos. While this means the bug only affects Pixel 6 devices, the Magic Eraser tool is one of the best features on the new phone.
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As the name implies, the Pixel 6’s Magic Eraser can remove elements from photos—such as unwanted objects in the background—and uses the phone’s powerful Tensor AI chip to believably fill in the blanks. It’s probably the best—and most desirable—photo editing tool the Pixel line has seen yet, but the latest Google Photos app update breaks it. It’s unclear what, exactly, the issue is, but it’s definitely localized to the new update; users who haven’t updated seem to be spared.
If you can still use Google Photos’ Magic Eraser tool on your Pixel 6, you should turn off automatic updates to avoid the problematic patch before it installs itself:
- Open the Google Play Store app on your Pixel 6.
- Search for ‘Google Photos’ in the search bar, or tap your profile picture in the upper-right and go to Manage apps & devices > Installed > Google Photos to open the app’s store page.
- On the Google Photos store page, tap the three-dot icon in the upper right.
- Disable ‘Enable Auto-Update.’
- Do not manually install any pending Google Photos updates either.
If you catch it in time, you should be safe to keep using Magic Eraser—and if it’s too late, well, you’ll know if you try to use the feature and it crashes. Unfortunately, you cannot rollback to previous versions of the app to fix the issue.
You should keep auto-updates off and avoid manual updates for Google Photos (or avoid using the Magic Eraser if you already have the bug) for a few days. Chances are Google will investigate the issue and push a patch to fix it as soon as possible since it’s such a severe and widespread issue.