I love the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, but using them with a Pixel is a mess

I love the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. That’s no surprise — I’ve owned all four generations of Pro Galaxy Buds, and I’ve loved all of them. They’re comfortable, sound great to my ears, and have features I can’t get anywhere else. The experience isn’t perfect, though. Using Galaxy Buds with something other than a Samsung device has always been a compromise, but with the Buds 4 Pro, that experience is nothing short of broken.

I use the home screen widget for my Galaxy Buds all the time. If they’re connected to another device, tapping the widget is a quick way to open the Galaxy Wearable app, and doing so automatically connects the buds to my Pixel 10 Pro. That’s besides the convenience of having easy access to sound controls. Unfortunately, the widget is almost entirely broken, as demonstrated by the video above.

Use anything that isn’t a Samsung phone or tablet, and the widget will delete itself from your home screen the moment you’ve finished setting it up. I’ve tried this across multiple Pixels and Motorola phones, and the result is the same each time. There is a workaround, but it’s a complicated one.

The Galaxy Wearable app shows a carousel of tips for your earbuds when they’re connected. One of those tips is a suggestion to use the widget, and it includes a button to add it to your home screen. This shortcut works, so you can use it to get the widget working. The problem is that it only works once. Placing the widget dismisses the tip, and I’ve never seen it come back again, so if you accidentally delete the widget from your home screen, there’s only one way to get it back: reset the app.

If you find yourself in that situation, then the only way to get it back is to delete the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro manager app from your phone and unpair your buds. Once you’ve done that, you can pair them again and redownload the app. After setting everything up, the widget tip should be in the carousel once more.

Until now, there hasn’t been much in the way of missing features when you use Galaxy Buds with something non-Samsung. You lose access to Samsung’s proprietary codec, so sound quality isn’t quite as good, but that’s it. Everything else has always worked, from touch controls to voice commands, but that isn’t the case anymore.

The Buds 4 and 4 Pro added head gestures that let you accept and reject calls and reply to Bixby with a nod or shake of the head. Unfortunately, I can’t use it on my Pixel 10 Pro, and the majority of Galaxy Buds 4 owners who are using a Samsung phone probably can’t either. For some reason, head gestures don’t just require a Samsung phone — it requires One UI 8.5, and unless you count the public beta, that’s only available on the Galaxy S26 series for now.

The broken widget and strange requirements for head gestures don’t prevent me from loving the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. They still sound great and are considerably more comfortable than the last generation, and I wouldn’t buy anything else. Still, I want them to be better, and in the case of the widget, I just want them to work.