Auto-rotate, tap-to-wake, and more features stop working on the Pixel 6, Pixel 7

The latest bug to infect the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 lines is one that prevents these models from auto-rotating from portrait to landscape orientation. This seems to be the case on YouTube. Yours truly has experienced this lately on my Pixel 6 Pro. Instead of automatically rotating into landscape, users are forced to tap on the little box on the lower right of the display in portrait to manually move the video into landscape orientation.

Pixel users find auto rotate not working with the YouTube app

Pressing the white outline of a box on the bottom right of the YouTube display (inside the circle) will move the video into landscape mode

Some claim that this problem isn’t limited to the Pixel brand. A Reddit subscriber using the name “adamcordo” (which just might be his real name) says that the same problem has popped up on his Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. As a result, he suggests that the issue might be something related to the YouTube app instead of being an Android bug.

Another issue, which this writer experienced late last week, took down one of the best Pixel features. Let’s say an alarm or a timer goes off. Just say “stop” and that will dismiss the alarm. On a personal note, I love this feature since it allows me to stop the timer or alarm even if I’m not right next to my phone to tap the “stop” button on the screen (and just to be clear, it’s not a matter of being lazy. I am crippled, in chronic pain, and use a cane).

Another issue that a Pixel 7 user wrote about seems reminiscent of the Pixel 6. A Reddit user with the handle of “shoelover46” says that the modem on his phone doesn’t kick in after he goes through an area without cellular service (like an underground parking garage) until he plays with the Airplane mode toggle.

Tap-to-wake and the Pixel 6 fingerprint scanner are both having issues

And as long as we’re airing out some grievances about the Pixels, we should point out that some of us are having inconsistent results with the tap-to-wake feature. There are periods of time when this works tremendously well, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. A Redditor using the name “AlaskanSnowDragon” writes, “I’d say for me (it) works 85-90 percent of (the) time. But it doesn’t work/register enough that it’s noticeable and annoying.”

The next update for the Pixel line will be the Quarterly Pixel Feature Drop expected on December 5th. Hopefully, some of these bugs will be exterminated with this update. Also, those of you on the Android 13 QPR1 Beta program will be able to exit and opt out of the Beta program once they install the stable version of the December Quarterly Feature Drop.