Missing the emoji and cinematic wallpapers from the June Pixel feature drop update? You're not alone

Soon after the feature drop announcement, fans and users of Pixel phones took to voice their concerns in the same r/android_beta Reddit thread where the announcement was made. From the comments, it appears that the missing features causing the biggest uproar are the Emoji and Cinematic Wallpapers.

The Emoji wallpapers should be available within Settings > Wallpaper & style as a new category named "Emoji Workshop" when you tap on "More wallpapers." Within this workshop, you are able to get as creative as you can by choosing your favorite emojis and create a unique wallpaper that matches your mood and interests.

Similarly, Cinematic Wallpapers — the same ones demoed at Google I/O this year — should be available within the same Wallpaper & style section and appear as an option when you choose to use an existing photo instead. The difference is that, if the feature is available to you, you should see the sparkle icon at the top. Tapping on that icon will prompt your Pixel to transform your 2D wallpaper into a dynamic 3D scene. This is achieved by using on-device machine learning to analyze the image and separate the subject from the background.

These two features were listed in yesterday's announcement. As there is o indication that they would see a staged rollout, it is unclear why many users are missing either one of both of them.

In some cases, the issue was due to a user running Android 14 beta. After rolling back from Android 14 beta and then installing the latest stable version of Android 13, user u/frankGawd4Eva reported getting a pop-up letting him know about these new features being available. This makes sense as the last update Android 14 received was Beta 3 a week ago, when these features were likely not ready yet. However, these should hopefully be available with Android 14 Beta 3.1. It is extremely important to note, though, that this is the nuclear option and should you roll back from Android 14 to Android 13, your phone's data will be completely wiped.

In other cases, the users reporting issues are running Android 13 QPR Beta 3, which also does not include the aforementioned features. If you are still on this beta, as per Google's own advice, you should opt-out of the Android Beta Program so that you can receive the public update and hopefully see these features appear after a reboot.

Aside from the above two scenarios, there are still random cases of users not running either of the two betas and are still missing the Emoji and Cinematic wallpapers on their Pixels. It's a very strange phenomenon, which I'm hoping Google addresses soon.

In my personal case, I am running the Android 14 beta on my Pixel, and I was able to install the Emoji Workshop via an APK sideload. This is not ideal and not a practice we condone here at Phone Arena. Still, as I am living that "Beta Life," I felt compelled to try it out.