Google January Play System Update reportedly halted due to internal storage bug

The January 2024 Google Play System Update (GPSU) has hit a snag. Following reports of users facing severe file access issues on their devices, Google has reportedly halted the update rollout to investigate the matter. This information was shared by Android expert Mishaal Rahman via a post on X, who claims to have received it from a “source”.

Over the past few days, Pixel users on Reddit have been reporting a cascade of problems related to internal storage access. These issues include:

• Internal storage not being mounted: Files stored on the phone become inaccessible.
• Camera crashes: The camera app freezes or crashes when attempting to take photos or videos.
• Empty Files app: The Files app shows no files present on the device.
• Unsaved screenshots: Screenshots cannot be saved to internal storage.

These symptoms are not new since Google Pixel users were recently affected by a similar internal storage bug back in October last year. Fortunately, it seems Google is working to address the problem at the moment as confirmed in a comment by an official Google account (u/PixelCommunity) on Reddit.

The culprit behind these problems appears to be the January GPSU and its interaction with a module called DCLA (Dynamic Common Library Apex). DCLA is a new technology used by Google for de-duplicating shared C++ libraries, aiming to reduce the overall size of updates. You can check out Mishaal’s post to get into the nitty-gritty details.

At present, it’s unclear how long it’ll take for Google to restart the rollout of the January Play System Update for Pixel devices. But granted that Google is already looking into the problem, we can expect to see an update with a fix for the problem soon.