Pixel 10 Pro Display Glitching After Update? You’re Not Alone

I’ve always been one of those loyal Pixel fans—the kind that lines up (virtually, at least) on launch day, updates the moment a patch drops, and raves about the camera to anyone who’ll listen. My Pixel journey started with the 3, and the 10 Pro felt like the perfect evolution: a display that wowed, Google’s AI magic everywhere, and that signature clean Android feel. So when the August 2025 security update arrived, I didn’t hesitate for a second.

That’s what makes what happened next extra frustrating—and a bit heartbreaking. Overnight, my dream phone went from silky smooth to, well, pretty much haunted.

Flickers & Ghosts, Oh My

I noticed the first glitch right after the update. I picked up my phone to unlock it, and instead of the usual crisp, gentle brightness, the screen quickly flickered—like a half-hearted blink. I shrugged. Maybe it was a weird boot-up artifact. But by breakfast, it was obvious something bigger was wrong.

What started as a minor flicker escalated fast:

• Flickers during app transitions and unlocking—like the screen was shorting out beneath my fingers.
• Random “phantom touches”: scrolling down suddenly sped up, or my keyboard started typing on its own.
• Sudden, jittery animations, especially when moving between apps or using gesture navigation.
• Odd, black splotches and occasional gray patches at the top of my display, which would sometimes fade in and out.
• Parts of my screen became almost unresponsive—especially around the status bar.

It genuinely felt like my phone was possessed. And the most frustrating part? Everything worked perfectly before the update. My device was barely three months old—no drops, no scratches, nothing that could explain a hardware failure.

Was It Just Me? (Spoiler: Nope.)

Naturally, I dove into the web for answers—Reddit, X/Twitter, Google’s own Pixel forums. It wasn’t long before I realized I wasn’t alone. There were dozens, then hundreds of posts with titles like:

• “Pixel 10 Pro display flickers after August patch—anyone else?”
• “Stuck with ghost touches post-update. Rolling back possible?”
• “Always-on Display dimmed after security update—happening to you?”

The stories matched my own. Some users said their Always-On Display had gone black entirely. A few noticed much faster battery drain as the phone’s graphics processor battled these bugs. And the sure link? The August 2025 patch.

The Main Symptoms—Are You Seeing These Too?

• Persistent display flickering, especially during unlocks or app switching
• Ghost touches (input appears without you touching the screen)
• Animation and transition “jitters”
• Black or gray patches near the top of the screen
• Touch response delays or outright unresponsive areas
• In rare cases, random device restarts

Tried-and-Tested Fixes: What Helped (And What Didn’t)

First, let’s get this out of the way: restarting, rebooting in safe mode, and clearing the cache partition did nothing. I tried them all, multiple times.

What did actually help, at least a bit:

1. Disabling Smooth Display

• Settings → Display → Smooth Display → Off
• This solution dropped the adaptive refresh rate (1–120Hz) down to a fixed 60Hz. I instantly saw fewer flickers and virtually no ghost touches. Animations felt flatter and less buttery, but the phone was usable again.

2. Force GPU Rendering (Developer Options)

• Settings → About Phone → Tap Build Number until Dev Mode enabled → Developer Options → Force GPU Rendering: ON
• Forcing the UI to always use the GPU for rendering smoothed out most app switching. However, after a few hours, flickers would return, random as ever.

3. Turning Off Always-On Display (AOD)

• Settings → Display → Lock screen → Disable “Always show time and info”
• For those dealing with dimmed or blacked-out screens while locked, this helped—at the cost of losing always-on time/status info.

4. Switching to Dark Theme

• This one’s less about science, more about comfort. Using dark mode seemed to reduce the frequency of visual glitches during transitions. Could be placebo, but for me, it genuinely made things feel less erratic.

5. Factory Reset (Last Resort)

• I held off, but some on the forums found that a full wipe fixed the issue—only to watch it return after restoring apps/data. Not recommended unless you have backups and your phone is totally unresponsive.

Has Google Acknowledged This Pixel Plague?

As of early August 2025, there’s no official acknowledgment from Google. No blog posts, no release note confessions, not even a tweet. The only ray of hope? Some users who reached out to Google Support say they were asked to submit bug logs, and beta testers are whispering that a September patch is already being tested. In other words: Google knows, but they’re taking their time to go public and fix it.

What’s Probably Going On?

No one outside Google’s engineering team knows for sure, but here’s what savvy devs and community sleuths suspect:

• GPU Driver Bug: The update might’ve introduced a new driver issue that messes up certain refresh rates or display timings, especially with adaptive frequencies.
• Touchscreen Firmware Regression: Some firmware responsible for registering touch may have rolled back, creating conflicts with the display.
• AOD and Smooth Display Conflict: Combining always-on display with an adaptive refresh system might be pushing the hardware into failure states, causing flicker and touch bugs.

What’s clear: it’s likely a software bug, not a hardware defect. Most phones were perfect before the update.

What to Do If You’re Stuck With a Flickery Pixel

Here’s my simple, not-overblown advice:

• Report the bug via the Pixel “Feedback” app or Google Issue Tracker.
• Disable Smooth Display and Always-On Display for now—even if it feels like a downgrade.
• Back up your data. While rare, a few users have seen the problem escalate into random restarts or full-on display blackouts. Better to be safe.
• Don’t rush to service centers or screen replacements—unless you truly have physical damage, this is almost certainly a bug, not a break.
• Hold off on additional updates until Google releases confirmed patch notes mentioning the fix.

Final Thoughts

I still love my Pixel 10 Pro. It takes brilliant photos, has buttery (well, usually buttery) animations, and Google’s AI features keep surprising me. But no phone, however smart, should become a source of daily anxiety due to a simple security update.

It’s the silence from Google that stings most. A little transparency goes a long way when loyal users start feeling like beta testers for their own hardware.

If you’re dealing with this haunted screen:

• You’re not alone.
• Your device isn’t dying.
• And if Google’s track record is anything to go by, a fix is coming (September can’t get here soon enough).

Until then: keep calm, tinker carefully, and remember—sometimes not updating is the best tech advice you can give yourself.

If you’re facing post-update bugs on other Android devices too, check out our guide on WhatsApp chat backup failing in Android 15 Beta — another update causing major trouble for users lately.