When Google removed the ability for the Play Store to notify users of app updates, people were understandably miffed. This even led to a third-party solution being developed, before Google eventually saw sense and brought it back as an optional setting (albeit off by default). This functionality appears to be broken now on various Android phones.
As spotted by our very own Artem Russakovski, if you try to turn app update notifications on for a Pixel phone, you simply get stuck. If you navigate to the Play Store app > Settings > Notifications > Updates completed and hit the toggle, normal procedure takes you to the notification category setting in Android where you have to enable another toggle. On phones other than Pixels that we’ve tested, this seems to work as expected, but the notifications don’t seem to be forthcoming.
On Google phones, the whole thing is borked — nothing happens when you flip the switch and the setting is not activated. Take a look:
Google Play Store has an “Updates completed” notification setting, but enabling it is completely broken for me.
🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/1lm5rjjRQg
— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) March 18, 2021
If you go back to the full list of notification categories for the Play Store and find the toggle in the list, it does appear to work there. This is only superficial, however, and the choice isn’t remembered. Go back to the Android settings or the app’s own settings and it’ll be turned off once more.
It’s hard to say why Google has so many issues with what should be such a simple function for its app store. We shall monitor the situation and let you know when a fix is rolled out, but don’t hold your breath for a quick fix.
