A bug affecting the Google Play Store makes a very useful shortcut disappear

There's a software bug that has infested the Google Play Store and thanks to this issue, a useful feature that delivers a shortcut to users has disappeared. This feature, when available, was the fastest way for you to check to see whether you have any updates for your Android apps. Before the infestation, if you long-pressed on the Google Play Store icon on the homescreen, you'd see shortcuts including one that said "My apps" and "App info."

Pressing on "App info" opens the page that goes by the same name and allows you to manage notifications coming from the Play Store, manage permissions for the app, clear the storage and cache memory on the app, and see other data such as the number of minutes of screen time that the Play Store managed to tally today, and the version of the app that is installed on your Android device is on the bottom.

The other option you might see when long-pressing the Play Store icon on your homescreen says "My apps," and this is the important option because tapping on it takes you directly to the "Manage apps & device" page from where you can see how many app updates you have in queue and you can tap once to have these updates completed. This is the fastest way to get this done except for one tiny, little problem.

A bug is keeping many Android users from seeing the "My apps" option when they long-press the Play Store icon. The long-press reveals only the "App info" option. It genuinely does not seem like Google has removed this feature (which many would see as a typical Google move). While the bug has circulated for a few weeks now, my Pixel 6 Pro running Android 14 QPR3 Beta 2.1 still shows "My apps" when I long-press on the Play Store icon on the homescreen.

If you do not have the "My apps" shortcut anymore, you can long-press the Play Store icon from your homescreen, tap on "App info" and Clear storage. This will eliminate some recent data and force you to reset purchase authentication preferences. However, it might exterminate the bug. There is also another possible fix that might work and that is installing the next update for the Play Store. To see if one is available, open the Google Play Store app and tap the Profile icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Tap on Settings > About > Update Play Store and see if this brings back the shortcut.