Pixel and Nexus owners have long complained about the ‘Check for Update’ button on their phone not doing anything. Repeatedly mashing the button whenever Google has rolled out a new software update for its Nexus or Pixel devices has done little except to further frustrate advanced users who are eager to get the update on their device as soon as possible. 

Back in 2017, a Googler had promised that the ‘Check for update’ would soon start working and allow users to manually pull the latest OTA update on their device. And the button did seem to work for a short while as intended but then its functionality broke again due to an incompatibility issue with Google Play services and the Checkin code. This was discovered by many frustrated Pixel and Nexus owners late last year when they tried to pull the Android 8.1 update from Google’s servers to no avail.

More than a couple of months later, Google seems to have fixed the Check for update button functionality for good. As many Pixel and Nexus owners have discovered today, tapping the ‘Check for Update’ actually pulled the March security patch on their devices immediately. If you are a Pixel or a Nexus owner that is still supported by Google, go ahead and press that Check for update button to get the March security patch on your device right away. And if that does not work, ensure that you are running the latest version of Google Play Services since that is what solves the problem here.

Let’s now hope that Google does not end up borking the feature again sooner or later.