We’ve seen Google evolve its Phone app over the past few years, adding smart features aimed at tackling spam, unknown callers, long wait times on hold, and much more. For the most part, these tools are vital to the people who use them, meaning they must work correctly 100% of the time.
Apparently, that doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment, with reports that Google’s Take a Message feature is leaking audio. This news comes from 9to5Google, and some users are sharing their experiences with the feature on Reddit. While the Take a Message feature is supported to record audio from the sender, it is not supposed to record audio from the receiver.
Something’s not quite right
Now, the worrying thing about this is that you won’t know what’s happening unless the caller tells you. You can keep an eye on your phone, but chances are you won’t even notice the Receive a Message feature turning on. While it’s unclear what is causing this at this time, it appears to occur on older Pixel models like the Pixel 4a.
However, there has also been a report where this issue occurred on the Pixel 10. And while this may be alarming, Google is aware of the issue and is working on it. The plus side here is that you can disable the feature completely to avoid this problem. It’s not the ideal scenario for most people, but at least it will prevent audio from leaking to the caller while the Receive a Message feature is active.
If you’ve never experimented with this feature before, it’s available on the Pixel 4 and newer models. However, you will need to be in a supported region to gain access, which for now includes the US, Australia, UK, and Ireland. If you want to check if this feature has been enabled, you will need to access the settings menu of the Pixel Phone app.
There should be an option to enable and disable Receive a message if available. Since there’s no timeline here for when this issue will be resolved, it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye out for any future news. Or, as noted above, you can be careful and turn it off completely for the time being.
