Still, Google’s Android skin has always drawn me back to Pixel phones as my daily driver, even compared to fantastic flagship phones like the Oppo Find X9 Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Right now, I’m using the Pixel 10 Pro as my main phone, and the experience has been pretty great. But there was one specific display issue that had been bothering me for a long time.
The problem was that the phone responded way too quickly to long presses on the screen. It constantly felt like the Pixel was triggering touch-and-hold actions far too aggressively.
After digging around for a while, I realized it wasn’t actually a bug at all. Pixels are intentionally tuned this way by default.
If you’ve been annoyed by the touch-and-hold delay on a Pixel phone, here’s how you can fix it.
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Tiny accidental touches kept ruining my home screen layout
If you’ve been bothered by this issue, you know what I’m talking about. Pixels tend to respond too quickly to touch-and-hold gestures.
For me, this became annoying while navigating around the home screen. I’d hold down my finger slightly while swiping. Instead of moving between pages, the phone would rearrange icons and mess up my whole layout.
Pixels react to long presses way too aggressively out of the box.
Plus, it affected my experience with a few social media apps, where long-pressing certain UI elements would accidentally trigger Android’s share sheet.
Thankfully, I recently realized this isn’t actually a bug. It’s simply how Google tunes the touch-and-hold sensitivity on Pixel phones by default.
The good thing is that you can change this easily when you know where to look. The setting isn’t directly available inside the regular display menu, so you have to dig a bit deeper into Accessibility settings.
- Open the Settings app on your Pixel phone.
- Scroll down and tap Accessibility.
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Select Timing controls.
- Tap Touch & hold delay.
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Choose between Short, Medium, or Long.
By default, Pixel phones are set to Short, which is why they react so quickly to long presses. Switching it to Medium makes a surprisingly noticeable difference and gives you a bit more time before long-press gestures trigger.
If Medium feels slightly too slow for you and you want something between Short and Medium, there is another workaround you can try manually.
Google’s presets aren’t enough, but you can manually tune your Pixel
A tiny ADB tweak is all you need to find the perfect middle ground
If you’re like me and feel that the Medium setting becomes slightly too slow while Short feels too aggressive, there is a way to manually tweak the long-press timing to reach a better middle ground.
The workaround involves changing the long-press timeout value through ADB to a value that sits between Google’s default Short and Medium presets.
If you don’t know your way around ADB commands, I recommend sticking with either Short or Medium. But if you’re comfortable using ADB on Android, you can run the following command:
adb shell settings put secure long_press_timeout 401
For reference, Google’s default values are:
- Short: 400ms
- Medium: 1000ms
- Long: 1500ms
Changing the value slightly above Google’s default Short preset can make a surprisingly noticeable difference.
I originally came across this trick through a Reddit thread where users noticed that using almost any custom timeout value outside Google’s presets helped improve the issue.
Personally, though, setting it just slightly above Short feels like the perfect sweet spot for me.
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I think Google should add a proper slider for this setting so that users can manually fine-tune the touch-and-hold sensitivity.
But until that happens, you’re mostly stuck relying on Google’s preset options or manually tweaking the value through ADB.
This isn’t the only part of the Google Pixel that can be improved through hidden settings and tweaks.
Several small features can make the experience much better, whether that’s creating a Private Space to keep sensitive files separate or adding third-party shortcuts directly to Quick Settings.
- SoC
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Google Tensor G5
- RAM
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16GB
- Storage
-
128 GB / 256 GB / 512 GB with Zoned UFS / 1 TB with Zoned UFS
- Battery
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4870mAh
- Operating System
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Android 16
- Front camera
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42 MP Dual PD selfie camera
Google’s latest Pro Pixel packs a faster yet efficient Tensor G5 chip, an upgraded ISP, and a brighter display. Plus, an array of new AI features that make it one of the best Android phones to launch in 2025.
