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  • Google says it has identified the culprit and has begun rolling out a fix. You don't need to do anything to get it, just sit tightly and the problem resolve on its own.

This seems to be the week of Bluetooth bugs. In what could be a related issue, we've received reports that notifications and notification sounds are being doubled (or even tripled) on Android devices which are paired with other Bluetooth devices. Some are also reporting that media and ringer volume are being inexplicably paired together, resulting in do not disturb, silent, and vibrate mode settings being effectively ignored when media channel volume is above silent.

Reports are fairly widespread and increasing substantially in frequency over the last week, with several threads regarding the issue appearing on Reddit and the Google Product Forums. This particular problem can manifest itself in three seemingly different ways that might seem like unrelated problems, but so far as we can tell, they're likely tied together:

  • Notification sounds can be doubled (or even tripled), often at different volume levels.
  • Notifications may immediately reappear one or more times after being swiped away.
  • Notification sounds will play even when the notification channel volume is set to vibrate or do not disturb modes.

We've been following reports for duplicated notification sounds and ringer/media volume issues for the last few days, and a temporary fix was provided by Google's support chat for those affected over on Reddit (TL;DR: disconnect from the BT device and reboot), but the issue reoccurs when reconnected to a Bluetooth device. A thread on the Issue Tracker has also been created, with 33 stars and 41 comments at the time of writing.

Interestingly, it doesn't need to be an audio device for a phone to suffer the issue, either. Our own Corbin was affected by the duplicate notification sound bug when using his Galaxy Watch Active with a OnePlus 6T.

Most reports indicate those affected have Pixel phones, but there are a smattering of other claims from those with devices including the Galaxy S9, Note 9, and Galaxy A5 — as well as our own experience on a OnePlus 6T. Odds are that plenty of other devices are also affected.

For some, only specific apps seem to be suffering the issue, and not everyone is getting all three problems at once. Although we can't be certain that these different notification issues are tied together, they seem to be happening in proximity for many (if not most) of those affected, and they appear to have started at around the same time in recent reports.

UPDATE: 2019/06/12 4:14am PDT BY RITA EL KHOURY

Google says it has identified the culprit and has begun rolling out a fix. You don't need to do anything to get it, just sit tightly and the problem resolve on its own.

We've identified a solution to resolve the issues reported here, and have begun rolling out a fix this week. The update will happen automatically, so users should notice improvements immediately.

Source: Google Issue Tracker; Google Product Forums; Reddit (1), (2), (3), (4)

Thanks: Phil Sweeny, Nate, Tim, and everyone who sent this in.