The Pixel Fold's cover screen is shutting off, but there's an easy fix

The first generation Google Pixel Fold was a surprisingly good foldable phone for a first effort, but sometimes, that early adopter curse hits regardless of quality. Some Pixel Fold owners have discovered a nasty bug that makes half of their phone unusable.

At least three users have reported their Pixel Fold's outer cover screen has stopped working. Completely.

Thankfully, the inner display still works, and there's also an easy workaround — but it's still not a good look for Google's foldable phone.

The Pixel Fold's cover display has gone dark

The cover display is a pretty vital part of any book-style foldable, as it's the part that functions like a regular smartphone display. If it isn't working, then you basically have a tablet you need to unfold to use — which isn't the best gadget.

The post from Chahine_sama details their problems with their phone's cover display. According to them, the cover display had been on the blink for a few months, randomly turning black and unresponsive. Sometimes it would be the inner display that was struck down, but since the problem was always fixed with a reboot, they thought nothing of it.

It seems there may have been more going on under the hood than they had bargained for, as after the Pixel Fold's battery was allowed to run dry completely, the cover screen refused to work at all.

Interestingly, it doesn't seem to be a case of the hardware not working, as they report it lights up during boot, and displays the Google logo. However, after starting Android, it refuses to work at all. This perhaps indicates a software problem, rather than hardware.

Other users were quick to share their issues, including one which sounds extremely similar. They recommended the original poster report the situation to Google as possible.

In better news, that user did discover a way to get their outer screen working again, and shared it with the original poster. Using an app from Github, they were able to switch the displays, which allowed the cover display to work again.

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It's a bit of a clunky workaround, but as they pointed out, it proves there's nothing wrong with the screen's hardware, and it means it works for the time being. Hopefully soon Google pushes out an update to fix it, but given this problem doesn't seem to be too widespread, it's likely below the dreaded Pixel battery drain bug in the priority queue.