Google Pixel’s ‘Check for update’ button does what it says it does — again

The “Check for update” button on the Google Pixel is an enigma. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Who knows? It depends on the day, or the weather, or something, I guess. The latest development in the story of the unreliable button is that it’s once again doing what it says it does…

With the release of last month’s security patches for the Google Pixel and Nexus devices, I noted that the “Check for update” button was most definitely in a season of not working. Even after some devices were getting their December updates, attempts to manually trigger a download on my Pixel 3 just wasn’t enough to get my hands on those precious bug fixes.

Now, as Android Police noticed first, the button seems to be working again. Any attempts to manually check for the January update are well, doing that, and I can confirm that when I tapped “Check for update” on my Pixel 3 just now, my device did indeed check for an update.

This story goes back a while. As far as we remember it, a Googler announced in September 2017 that the button was fixed, but that was short-lived thanks to a bug of some kind. Then in December, “Check for update” was working internally, and a fix was scheduled to rollout in 2018.

Then in February, many users on Reddit and elsewhere reported that “Check for update” button was working as intended. Of course, several months later, I noted that it wasn’t. Hopefully this time is the last time and this very minor issue is fixed once and for all. It’d be really nice.