A new Google Pixel bug changes your notification sounds

Well, here we are again — another Google Pixel bug just in time for Easter. According to a report by 9to5Google, several Pixel owners are finding that their ringtone, Default notification sound, and Default alarm sounds have randomly changed. Unfortunately, this is causing issues with missed calls and notifications because the new sounds the phones are switching to do not actually exist on the phone.

I noticed the issue on my pixel over the weekend when I was outdoors, didn’t hear my phone ring, then suddenly checked my notifications and saw that I had five missed calls. I thought something I had tinkered with caused this since I am, after all, using a Beta build. I then proceeded with changing my ringtone to something else and didn’t give the issue another thought. A couple of days later, I saw the report about this bug and decided to check on the rest of my sound settings when I noticed my default notification sound had been changed to something called “NFCFailure.” I have since then changed it back to the default sound.

As 9to5 explains, the timing of the bug seems to line up with the release of the Android 12 April security patch that rolled out to those running the stable release, whereas, for me, it lined up with the Android 12 QPR3 Beta 2 update. Unfortunately, Google has not addressed this issue yet, so all we can do right now is double-check that our phones are using the correct notification sounds or at least one that doesn’t have a strange name. You can do this by going to Settings > Sound & Vibration. Below are the default sounds (courtesy of 9to5Google), but you can choose any sound you want from the sound picker.

Default sounds for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro:

• Ringtone: Your New Adventure
• Notification: Eureka
• Alarm: Fresh Start

Default sounds for older Pixel phones:

• Ringtone: The Big Adventure
• Notification: Popcorn
• Alarm: Bright Morning 

Let’s hope Google acknowledges this quickly and works on making sure this doesn’t happen again with any future updates. There is simply no excuse for issues like this to continue happening every time a security patch is pushed, especially not on Stable releases.