A nasty Pixel Fold bug is making one screen stop working

Foldable phones are supposed to give you the best of both worlds — a cover display for quick tasks and a large inner screen for everything else. So when one of those screens suddenly stops working, the experience falls apart fast. And that’s exactly what seems to be happening to several first-generation Google Pixel Fold users after a recent update. Reddit user Chahine_sama recently shared a particularly strange issue with the original Pixel Fold.

According to the post, the phone had been acting oddly for months. Sometimes the cover display would randomly go black and stop responding. Other times, it was the inner folding screen that would do the same thing instead. The behavior was inconsistent, which somehow made it even more confusing. Oddly enough, a simple reboot always brought the dead screen back to life, so the issue never seemed serious at first. It felt more like one of those annoying software hiccups you ignore because restarting fixes everything anyway.

Then the issue took a more serious turn. According to the user, the Pixel Fold eventually powered off completely after the battery drained to 0%. But once it was charged and turned back on, the outer cover display stopped working entirely. The inner folding screen continued to function normally, while the cover screen remained completely black.

However, the cover display is not actually dead. Every time the Pixel Fold boots up, the screen lights up properly and shows the Google logo without any problem. But as soon as Android finishes loading, the display turns black again, making it unusable. That strongly suggests this is not a hardware failure or a broken panel. Instead, something in the software appears to be disabling the screen after startup.

The user reportedly tried nearly every obvious fix — rebooting again, booting into safe mode, resetting app preferences, and checking whether a hidden display setting had been accidentally enabled. Nothing worked.

So, the user turned to Reddit, hoping someone knew an obscure ADB command or hidden developer trick that could revive the display. And surprisingly, the internet may have actually found a workaround before Google did.

Digging through the comments, a user pointed to one workaround reportedly fixing the issue: an app called Fold Switcher, available on GitHub and F-Droid. According to the original poster, opening the app and switching the device setting to “Rear Display” or “REAR_DISPLAY_OUTER_DEFAULT” instantly brought the cover screen back to life. The fix apparently works in standard user mode too, without requiring Shizuku or advanced setup.

More importantly, this doesn’t look like an isolated case anymore. Another user in the thread reported experiencing nearly identical symptoms after updating their device. That’s particularly concerning because foldables already come with enough durability anxiety. Users accept the fragile hinges and ultra-thin displays because they expect a polished software experience. But when a software update can effectively disable one-half of the phone, it becomes much harder to trust the device in the long term.

As of now, Google has not publicly acknowledged the issue or released an official fix. If you own a first-gen Pixel Fold and your cover display suddenly stops responding after an update, this workaround may be worth trying — though, like most community fixes, your mileage may vary.