Earlier this month, some Google Pixel owners reported that the Digital Wellbeing feature had been causing stutters and lag when running in the background which when turned off provided a smoother experience. Two weeks later, Google has come out with a response saying Digital Wellbeing isn’t really the one to be blamed.
The response came from the official PixelCommunity account on Reddit who replied to one of the thread which had been made to point the performance issues on the Pixel phones. Google said that after thorough analysis, it was able to conclude that the Digital Wellbeing App on Pixel doesn’t cause any performance issues.
However, the company was able to identify “changes unrelated to the bug reports for improving performance” and added that it’ll soon be rolling software updates that would fix these bugs.
Prior to this, users reported that Disabling Digital Wellbeing on the Pixel provided them with better frame rates and smoother UI when multitasking, with some users, even calling the difference as “night and day”. It was perceived that the kind of monitoring that Digital Wellbeing does on a phone could be the reason for better performance in the foreground.
The full comment from Google on the issue reads: “We conducted a thorough analysis based on the bug reports and internal testing, and have found no performance issues associated with the Digital Wellbeing app on Pixel. During the investigation, we identified changes unrelated to the bug reports for improving performance, and we are in the process of rolling out those changes to make your Pixel device better”.