[U: Fixed] ‘Severe weather alerts’ appear to be disabled for the Pixel Launcher ‘At a Glance’ widget

Abner Li | Jan 7 2022 - 12:44 pm PT

Last week, Google unintentionally showed a storm warning meant for the Philippines worldwide. Following that incident, severe weather alerts in the Pixel Launcher’s At a Glance widget appear to have been disabled entirely.

Update 1/7/22: This issue was fixed earlier in the week via a server-side update (version 13.0 of the Google app also rolled out for beta users today). The toggle looks to have automatically been re-enabled for all users.

Original 12/20/21: On Android 12, visiting settings for At a Glance shows you a list of the six available features that are available following the left-aligned redesign. Users have found the “Alerts” toggle just underneath “Weather” to be off. You can re-enable, but returning back to the page immediately switches it back off.

This issue also occurs on Pixel phones still running Android 11 with the latest Google app (version 12.48), but the setting is entirely gone. The issue started to emerge on Friday and has persisted into today, and it looks to be a global issue on devices we checked.

One possible theory could be that last week’s errant alert resulted in Google disabling severe weather alerts entirely, either on purpose or accidentally. This bug is strange for people that have come to use and expect the capability. On Pixel phones, it’s integrated in the first homescreen, lockscreen, and always-on display (AOD).

It’s also available if you use the Google app widget. Google first introduced At a glance severe weather alerts, which are sourced from your country’s weather service, in late 2020 before rolling them out more widely earlier this year. The agency is noted, and a tap loads more information.

Hopefully, there’s a server-side fix to this issue that does not require a Google app update. Meanwhile, chime in below if you’ve received severe weather alerts via At a Glance over the weekend. It could just be the settings UI that is disabled, but that’s probably not the case.