The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are now firmly in the hands of those who were lucky enough to get their units shortly after launch, but as with any Pixel generation, people are starting to run into problems. The latest in line is an issue that crops up when you change the animator duration scale in developer options, which makes the fingerprint icon and the battery level on the Always On Display (AOD) disappear, as explained by a Redditor.

If you know how to activate developer options and then changed the default animator duration in them, you should probably be able to find your way back into the respective section in your system settings to bring back the AOD's full functionality. If not, just head to System -> Developer Options and look for the "animator duration scale" entry. You can also find it by using your system setting's search function. Change the animator duration scale back to 1x, et voilà, you'll have the fingerprint icon and your battery indicator back.

A commenter in the Reddit thread mentions that changing the animator duration scale also causes an issue on the Pixel 5 (and possibly earlier) that takes you to the lockscreen after hitting the back-mounted fingerprint scanner in AOD, forcing you to authenticate once more to actually enter your phone.

It's unclear what exactly causes this problem, but we assume that it has something to do with how the Always On Display dynamically switches over to the lockscreen when you hit the power button or tap the screen. On the Pixel 6, that involves an animation that turns the fingerprint outline from the AOD into a fully formed button, and we'd presume that this animation has only ever been intended to work on the 1x setting. Given that the animator duration scale is part of the developer options, which is technically only meant to be used by developers (as the name implies), it's not too surprising that things don't work perfectly after changing them.

As any Pixel launch, the Pixel 6 release didn't go without its hiccups, though so far, we've run into fewer issues than usually, which is promising. Many people weren't able to pre-order their units after the event due to issues with the Google Store, and other shops didn't have a lot in stock, either. That means that many people are still eagerly waiting to get their hands on their new Pixel phones, with some backordered until December. Those who were lucky enough to get their units found a weird screen flicker problem that pops up when they repeatedly press the power button while the device is turned off. Here, Google has already promised to bring a fix with the upcoming December patch.