Google is disabling some features of the Phone app on older Pixel devices after acknowledging an issue that inadvertently leaked audio to callers. The issue has been specifically linked to the Message feature released last year, which automatically replies to and transcribes voicemails when you miss a call, with a handful of Pixel 4 and 5 owners reporting that their microphones were active while callers were leaving messages.
“We have investigated this issue, which we have confirmed affects a very small subset of Pixel 4 and 5 devices under very specific and rare circumstances,” Google community manager Sri Tejaswini said on a support page. “Out of an abundance of caution, we are disabling the one message and next general call screen features from these devices.”
A Reddit user who tested the bug said that callers didn’t hear their usual voicemail greeting, and that they “could hear me/room voices while they were leaving the message.” The user describes how the microphone privacy indicator in the upper right corner of their phone display was triggered after they missed a call and activated a message. “It was like I picked up the phone, except I didn’t do anything. It just passively started recording me and sending the audio to the caller.”
We’ve asked Google if these features are being permanently removed from the Pixel 4 and 5 handsets, or if they’ll be reinstated in the future. For now, Tejaswini says affected Pixel owners “will still be able to use manual and automated call screening or their carrier voicemail instead.”
