Don't look now, but your Pixel may be getting a surprise update

With December more than half over, many of us have our sights solidly on what’s coming up next, with holidays and the new year just days away. But before we dive headfirst into 2026, we’ve got at least one more system update arriving for Pixel phones.

Like any other month, we got December started with Google’s latest bugfixes and security patches hitting Pixel devices. And while normally that December update would have to tide us over until January, this week Google has started seeding a second update that’s already arriving on Pixels.

Just a little earlier today we spotted a Reddit thread from user tgrsnpr where Pixel 8, 9, and 10-series owners confirm that a new update arrived for their phones today. We’ve since been able to verify this on a Pixel 10 Pro, getting the update just now:

As you can see, it is very small, suggesting that we’re looking at something like a hotfix for a critical issue — and not much more. But so far there’s really not much we know about this update. Presumably availability extends down to the Pixel 6 series, but we’ve yet to confirm that.

Google’s Pixel firmware downloads still list only the original December update, and we’ve yet to see anything resembling a changelog for what’s rolling out today. As we keep digging around, we’ll update you with any further details we’re able to confirm about this new release .