March update reportedly breaks fingerprint sensor on some Google Pixel phones

The 2025 March Pixel drop is here, and this update brings a good number of changes to the table. Google has introduced a good number of new features, but per some users, this new update has also made their phone's fingerprint sensor unreliable. To be specific, the bug is said to leave the sensor unresponsive.

This weird glitch doesn't appear to be affecting a whole lot of Pixel users. To be specific, the officials from GrapheneOS, which is an open-source Android skin available for Pixel phones, estimate that 1 in 1000 devices are affected by this weird fingerprint glitch. So, it's safe to say that the bug is extremely rare.

It appears that the Google Pixel 9 (256 GB curr. $749 on Amazon) is the most vulnerable to this fingerprint bug. Per user reports, Google's last-gen Pixel 8 also seems to be quite susceptible to the issue. As for the problem itself, after the March update is installed, the fingerprint sensor of the affected phones is said to disappear.

The option to adjust the scanner reportedly gets removed from the phone settings, and the sensor is said not to respond. Fortunately, a good number of users have reported that the glitch is easy to fix. They report that powering the affected Pixel phone down and turning it back on makes the fingerprint scanner work normally again.

However, it's worth noting that a couple of the affected users said that they needed to reboot their Pixel phone quite a number of times to get the fingerprint scanner back. Another thing that's worth pointing out is that a regular reset is said not to work. Instead, you would need to completely power the device off and then turn it on.