The Google Pixel 4 launched in October 2019. Though notorious for poor battery life, the phone was a decent package with flagship specifications and the Google cameras and software everyone loved. It had a unique feature called Motion Sense.
With Motion Sense, you can swipe through the air for multimedia control. Unfortunately, the feature was bug-ridden and didn’t work very well. This was the main point of criticism for the Pixel 4 series, along with mediocre battery life and some quality control problems.
All major carriers in the USA sold the Pixel 4. It was the first Pixel to have a dual-camera system. It had a standard 27mm 12.2 MP (f1.7) camera and a 16 MP 50mm (2X) zoom lens.
People buy Pixels primarily for the software experience and cameras. Another factor is the delivery of security patches on day one, along with three years of consistent updates. The Pixel 4 series, despite its flaws, was still a respected phone. The software isn’t entirely bug-free, though.
While not a major experience-breaking bug, Pixel 4 users reported problems with live wallpapers over the past month. Reports are across Google Support Pages, Reddit, and Twitter. It appears that only the Pixel 4 series is facing these issues. It isn’t easy to pinpoint a cause for this, but the scale seems significant enough.
The wallpaper initially fails to apply. If you try downloading it, an error message that says “Wallpaper unavailable” is displayed. For some other Pixel 4 owners, an error message, “The app is no longer compatible with your device,” is shown.
If you search for the Live Wallpapers app on the Play Store, it shows a compatibility error and asks you to contact the app developers.
You can try basic troubleshooting methods like clearing the app cache or data, uninstalling and reinstalling the app, or restarting your device. These simple methods might appear trivial, but they do solve system bugs.
People have pointed out that these problems only began after the Android 13 update since Live Wallpapers worked perfectly fine on Android 12. There’s a chance that it’s an overlook by the app developers, causing this bug on Android 13.
You can still use Live Wallpapers, though. If you apply wallpaper from a third-party source, it seems to work just fine. So, this is a problem from Google’s end.
People on Reddit have assumed that the Google Live Wallpaper app was discontinued. It’s not very likely that Google would discontinue an app in which they regularly update wallpapers every festive season. There was no official news of discontinuation either.
If your device has a problem with applying Live Wallpapers from Google’s app, there are, thankfully, several simple solutions. There are several third-party Live Wallpaper apps on the Play Store, and all of them perform the same task.
Google has not officially acknowledged the problem with Live Wallpapers on the Pixel 4 series. They also didn’t mention anything about the discontinuation of the Live Wallpapers app. We will update you if there’s any further news on the Pixel Live wallpaper app.