A new bug in Google Messages can cause your camera to turn on in the background, quickly draining your battery and heating up your device.
renew: Google has started rolling out fixes for the Messages app.
In the Google Messages app, there’s an easy way to quickly snap a photo and instantly attach it to a message and send it to a friend. In the view with images attached from your gallery, there’s also a live feed from your camera, and snaps can be taken instantly from that thumbnail view, or you can expand it for a better view.
In the latest update to the Google Messages app, as spotted on one of our own devices and reported on Reddit, a bug in the app occasionally caused this camera feed to run even when it was off-screen – Including when Messages is in the background. In our experience, this causes a lot of battery drain and heat, as you might expect.
With usage increasing for no apparent reason, we had to use Android 12’s camera and microphone privacy indicators to track down the issue. When something goes wrong, Android 12 devices will show that Google Messages is actively using your camera. The easiest way to stop the problem now is to close the app from the Recents view.
Update 4/22: in the declaration edge, Google has confirmed that the cause of this battery draining bug has been identified and a permanent fix has been rolled out to users of the Google Messages app. It is unclear which version numbers will contain the fix. The latest beta version of Google Messages was released on April 19th.
More broadly, if you don’t use the Google Messages viewfinder, the easiest way to stop this problem altogether in the short term is to deny the app permission to use your phone’s camera. To do this on a Pixel phone, press and hold the Messages app icon in the launcher, then tap the info icon. This should take you to the Settings app, where you can tap Permissions to manage what Google Messages is allowed to do. From here, you need to tap on “Camera” and set the toggle to “Don’t Allow”.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve experienced similar issues on your phone, including which phone you’re using and whether you’ve signed up for beta updates for Google Messages.
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