Don’t Forget to Check for Google Play System Updates on Your Pixel Phone

With the launch of Android 10, Google introduced Project Mainline, a new way for Google to push important security updates to devices through Google Play. Now that Android 10 is available to all Pixel phones, as well as a handful of others, you should remember to check for these updates to make sure your phone is always up-to-date.

I’m suggesting that you check because the rollout of these Google Play system updates is still kind of awkward. I still have yet to receive a notification for a Google Play system update, yet the few times I’ve checked for them on my Pixel phones, typically around the time they push monthly Android updates, one seems to be available. For example, I randomly checked a few minutes ago and sure enough there was an update on my Pixel 3 XL.

I’m assuming at some point that Google Play will prompt me to install these, it just hasn’t happened yet. It’s early or something, right?

Need to know how to check for a Google Play system update?

1. Open Settings>About phone
2. Tap on the Android version
3. Tap on “Google Play system update”

Once you check, should there be an update available, the screen (seen above) will tell you how big the update is and what’s included. With today’s update, you can see that this should provide the “latest security patch from Google.” That’s not super specific, but could be in future updates as Google gets this all dialed in.

On a related note, the update today appears to have a wrong date attached. On my “Android version” page, the date for the Google Play system update switched from September 1 back to August 1. Awkward.