Some Pixel phones have forgotten how to Flip to Shhh

Your Pixel phone comes with a handy little trick for those moments when you just can’t be bothered — it lets you turn your phone face down on a flat surface to silence all notifications. Called Flip to Shhh, it was released with the Pixel 3 all the way back in 2018. Up until recently, the gesture-based feature has largely worked as intended — that, however, is no longer the case for some.

Over the last couple weeks, several disgruntled users have taken to Reddit to air their frustration with the feature. Flip to Shhh had suddenly stopped working for many with no clear reason.

The bug manifests differently for many. For some, the feature was still listed in Settings but couldn’t be toggled on. For others, the option stopped appearing within Settings altogether.

“So my flip to shh randomly stopped working, and when I went to settings to turn it off and on again, I got a pop up saying that it can’t be turned on without any kind of specifics,” wrote one user, while a different Pixel owner notes, “I also tried different solutions until the option itself disappeared completely – very disappointed as this is a key feature in my daily usage during work or when I go to bed.”

The bug spans several different models, with confirmed reports from users of the Pixel 7, Pixel 7a, Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro, Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and the Pixel 10.

The good news is that there appears to be a quick fix for the bug. The bad news is that there doesn’t seem to be a universal solution.

Over the last week, users have reported that manually updating the Digital Wellbeing app fixes the issue.

Although Google hasn’t publicly documented a change or fix for Flip to Shhh, versions 1.45.962432453 (856347) and 1.46.949667801 (865347) of the app, both released shortly after the first week of August, appear to fix the issue for some.

I personally did not encounter the bug with older Digital Wellbeing builds, so I haven’t been able to independently verify whether the update actually fixes the issue. That being said, a growing number of users on the original Reddit threads claim that the new builds restored Flip to Shhh’s functionality. The updates aren’t necessarily what fixed the issue, but the timing surely suggests that:

Yesterday I received the update 1.46.949667801 and sleep mode and “flip to shh” came back and is working fine.

While the update appears to fix the issue for many, it hasn’t worked for everyone. Some users in the same thread say that things remain broken despite updating to the new build. Others suggest that the app update temporarily fixed the issue, only for the feature to break again with the exact same behavior as last time.

We’ve reached out to Google for more information. We’ll update this story if and when we hear back.