This YouTube video is causing Pixel devices to crash

A strange new bug is affecting Pixel devices, including the current-gen flagship Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro.

The issue first surfaced in a Reddit post made by ‘OGPixel5‘ on Sunday, February 26th. According to OGPixel5, their Pixel 7 Pro automatically crashes and reboots when a specific YouTube video is played on it.

Back in 2020, an image surfaced on Reddit that caused Android smartphones to crash when it was set as the phone wallpaper. The current bug seems to be similar to the wallpaper one. The YouTube video bug seems to be affecting some Pixel 6 and 6a devices as well, though not all Pixel 7 series devices are impacted by the bug.

The video in question is this one, and it needs to be played on the YouTube app on your Pixel device to reboot it. Multiple users on the thread played the video, and a majority of them claimed that their devices rebooted. “It legit screwed my phone up for about 5 minutes. Cellular network wouldn’t connect. Had to reboot again,” wrote ‘cour000,’ while ‘snickers58‘ said, “Another Pixel 7 user. Phone crashed as soon as the YouTube app was loading up. Did a rather quick reboot tho.”

Even though the bug appears to be harmless, users are still recommended not to play the video as it could result in you losing cellular connectivity for a while.

MobileSyrup news editor Jonathan Lamont tried to play the video on his Pixel 7, and the device crashed and rebooted as soon as the video started playing.

In the case of the wallpaper bug, it was the device reading the colour space used in the photo incorrectly. The result is that a specific value at a certain point exceeds its defined maximum, which leads to an ‘out-of-bounds exception’ and crashes the System UI. It is currently uncertain why playing the video causes the device to crash and reboot, though it could be similar to the wallpaper bug.