Google Pixel 3 And Pixel 3a December Security Update Is Crashing The Pixel Launcher

The Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a smartphones are no longer the latest and greatest of the Pixel devices, bu there are still plenty of the smartphones out in the wild. This week Google released a patch for the Pixel range, which didn't apply to the new Pixel 4 smartphones. Since the December security update was launched, users of the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a have noticed that the Pixel Launcher is repeatedly crashing.

The launcher crash has forced many to perform a hard reset of their devices. The launcher crash is seemingly a widespread issue as multiple reddit threads have sprung up complaining about the problem. The crashes appear to be isolated to users of devices with the Pixel 3 or 3a who are running the Pixel 4 launcher with Android 10 feature navigation enabled.

Those using the devices with Android Pie's two-button or legacy three-button navigation scheme on the same device and launcher setup aren't seeing the crash behavior according to reports. Turing on the new gesture navigation features did bring the crashes back. Many owners of affected devices resorted to factory resetting the smartphones, since the crash prevented menu navigation from changing settings to attempt to fix the problem.

Some users did find success by uninstalling the launcher updates to fix the crash without having to factory reset their device. Users note that tapping the "app info" on the pop-up message will take the user to the launcher settings. Once in settings, tapping on the three-dot menu will give the ability to uninstall updates. So far, Google has made no comments on the crash issue.

The Pixel 3a was on a big discount last month at $299 ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.