Robert Triggs / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google seems to have overlooked a bug in Android 15 that affects the wallpaper-based theming system.
- It results in users getting fewer unique wallpaper color options with several duplicates.
- The bug was first spotted in a beta release, but it has made it to the stable build.
The Android 15 rollout for Pixel devices doesn’t seem to be going as smoothly as Google might have hoped. In addition to the update missing some of the advertised features, we’ve also come across several reports of Pixel users facing an annoying bug in the Instagram app. While Google has confirmed that the missing features will reach users over the next few weeks and Instagram has already released an update to fix the Stories issue, there’s one bug in the latest Android release that seems to have gone under Google’s radar.
The wallpaper-based theming system in Android 15 has a minor issue. It affects the “Wallpaper colors” carousel in the Wallpaper & style settings on Pixel devices, which offers a selection of color combinations based on your current wallpaper to theme icons, text, and other UI elements. Instead of offering a selection of unique color combinations, the carousel shows several duplicates.
The attached screenshots show duplicate color combinations at the opposite ends of the carousel. The selection changes when you switch to a different wallpaper, but you only get a few unique options and a bunch of duplicates. Google was made aware of this issue when it was first spotted in the fourth beta release of Android 15 back in July, but it’s still present in the stable build that rolled out to Pixel devices earlier this week.
According to an entry on Google’s Issue Tracker, the Googler assigned to the bug concluded that the feature was working as intended. However, the carousel offered more unique color combinations and no duplicates in the previous Android release.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like a fix is in the works as the issue tracker entry was given a “Won’t fix (Intended behavior) status. A separate entry concerning the same issue notes that someone is still assigned to the bug, but there haven’t been any updates on it since August.
We’ve contacted Google for a comment on the matter and to find out if this is indeed intended behavior or a bug. We’ll update this post as soon as we have more details.
