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- Android 16 adds a shortcut to open Google Wallet with a power button double-press, but Google has limited this feature to the Pixel 8 and newer devices.
- Despite no apparent technical limitations, Google intentionally disabled the gesture on older phones like the Pixel 7 Pro, offering no clear reason for the decision.
- The feature was manually enabled on an unsupported Pixel 7 Pro and worked perfectly, suggesting the hardware is capable and the limitation is artificial.
While Android 16 is light on new user-facing features, it delivers a few genuinely useful additions for Pixel owners. You can now double-press the power button to open Google Wallet (or your default wallet app), making it quicker to switch your active credit card or transit pass on the go. This is a simple quality-of-life improvement for frequent Google Wallet users, but strangely, Google has limited the feature to newer Pixels only.
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On my Pixel 8 Pro running Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1, a “Double press power button” page under Settings > System > Gestures lets me choose between launching the Pixel Camera app and Google Wallet. On my Pixel 7 Pro running the same software version, however, this page is absent. Instead, it only has the older “Quickly open camera” page, with a simple toggle for the camera shortcut.
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