How to Hide the OTA Notification on the Pixel and Pixel XL

If you don’t want to allow automatic updates, you can follow these steps to hide the OTA update notification on the Pixel and Pixel XL.

In a previous tutorial, I showed you how to disable automatic OTA system updates on the Pixel phones. This is something you might want to do if you have gained root access to your Pixel or Pixel XL, and can especially be helpful for carrier variants in case they push out an update that prevents you from unlocking the Verizon Pixel bootloader.

While this does prevent the OTA update from being installed in the background, it won’t prevent the notification from appearing in the Notification Panel.

Now, I also did a tutorial that showed you how to block an application notification with the Pixel phones. You technically do have the option to do this, and it will prevent that notification from appearing. However, this notification is handled by Google Play Services, and you most likely do not want to block all notifications from this app. Thankfully, there is a way to specifically block the OTA update notification from appearing, but it does require that you root the Pixel phone ahead of time.

As long as you have root access though, you can follow these steps to hide the OTA update notification.

Pixel Hide OTA Notification

1. Download the Disable Service application from the Play Store
2. Launch the Disable Service application
3. Tap on the ‘System’ tab at the top right
4. Scroll down and tap on the ‘Google Play Services’ option
5. Scroll down again and tap on the ‘SystemUpdateService’ option
6. Grant the application root access via SuperSU
7. Wait 5-10 seconds for the changes to take effect
8. Press the Home button to go back to the Home Screen
9. Then reboot the Pixel phone

Note – I have had times where the change did not stick after rebooting the phone. Be sure to wait long enough for the app to disable the service. If you come across this issue, try the steps outlined above again. When testing this myself, it took me two tries to get it to stick the first time, but it worked on the first try on future attempts.

Explanation

You would think that disabling automatic OTA updates would prevent the notification from appearing in the first place. Google still wants to you to stay up to date so they keep that system update service running in the background (even if you have disabled the update from being automatically installed). This is why we have to take things a step further and disable the service with root access.

As mentioned, you’ll need to have root access on your Pixel phone, and to do that you will likely need to have the bootloader unlocked. Follow my root guide if you need help getting to this point. You’ll then want to download the Disable Service application that is linked in the guide above. After you launch this application, tap the System tap and then scroll down so you can look for the Google Play Services application.

Tap on this application and then you’ll be presented with an even bigger list. As shown in the image above, you’ll want to scroll almost all the way down until you see the SystemUpdateService package. This option will be enabled by default (with a check mark), and you’ll need to tap on it to disable it. If this is the first time you’ve used this application, you will be prompted to allow root access once you tap on it to disable the package.

After you allow root access via the SuperSU prompt, you’ll want to wait five to ten seconds while the application goes into the Android OS and disables the package. After a few seconds, go ahead and tap on the Home button so that you’ll be taken back to the Home Screen. From here, all you have to do is reboot the phone and wait for it to boot back into the Android OS. Once you have unlocked the phone, wait 30 – 60 seconds to see if the notification for the OTA update appears again.

As noted, this appeared for me again the first time I tried this method. It could have happened because I didn’t wait long enough to reboot, but I can’t be certain. If this happens to you, all you need to do is follow the steps again to disable the SystemUpdateService package. On my first attempt at hiding the OTA update notification, I had to do this process twice. But I only had to go through the steps once on subsequent attempts. So your mileage may vary.