Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 is out now for your Pixel phone to test

Last week marked a major milestone for Android releases, with Android 17 finally hitting stable and starting to go out to Pixel devices everywhere. As much as we were looking forward to that release, testers are already onto the next big update beyond that one, with Google’s Android 17 QPR1 Betas giving them a taste of the changes set to land with the September Feature Drop. After QPR1 Beta 4 landed two weeks back, Google’s now ready to move on to QPR1 Beta 5.

Google’s Mishaal Rahman shares the good news over on X, confirming that build CP31.260608.007 is incoming for testers on Pixel 6 and later devices. That’s important because last time the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were explicitly excluded — although Google promised we’d see support for those older models returning with this new release.

As you should probably expect from a Beta 5, at this point Google’s largely in cleanup mode — and that spells a whole lot of bugfixes. Here’s what Google shares to expect:

• An issue in the Game Dashboard where users were unable to stop screen recordings or save video files. (Issue #296368569, Issue #328539170)
• An issue where the camera app temporarily freezes or stutters shortly after being opened from an idle state. (Issue #330488811)
• An issue that caused the screen to freeze with a pixelated bottom bar when waking the device from Always-On Display. (Issue #515393542, Issue #515497396)
• A timeout issue where the Download Manager failed to complete downloads when excluded from an active VPN connection. (Issue #475985649)
• An issue causing inconsistent charging completion time estimates to display on the lock screen versus the charging screensaver. (Issue #489503595)
• An issue causing the Private Space UI to crash and locked private apps to improperly appear in launcher search results. (Issue #515631415)
• A system crash and device hang that occurred when downloading games. (Issue #515364954)
• An issue where a non-functional bubble option incorrectly appeared in the context menu of archived apps. (Issue #514585702)
• A system-level WebView rendering regression that caused Monopoly Go to freeze and crash when attempting to open mini-games. (Issue #516576731)
• Home screen widgets would disappear or become unavailable in the widget picker after a device reboot. (Issue #488125748, Issue #505117543, Issue #505671079, Issue #497140330, Issue #506685943, Issue #510967059)

One very nice change Rahman confirms is the addition of a new “don’t ask me again” toggle when turning on mobile data:

If you’re curious to try QPR1 for the first time, you can get started by registering your Pixel device in Google’s Android Beta Program.

On the flip side, if you’ve been testing the Android 17 Beta and would rather just make the move to stable without having to wipe all your device’s data, Google warns that you should not install QPR1 Beta 5, and instead proceed to opt out of the program.