Android 17 QPR1 Brings Mysterious Status Bar Icon Changes to Pixel Devices

This month's stable release of Android 17 QPR1 has introduced some unexpected changes to Pixel status bar icons.

The silent or mute icon, for instance, is now represented by a bell instead of a crossed-out speaker, which was a change made in the previous version of Android. This alteration was not present during the beta testing cycle and only appeared with the stable release this week.

This might be an accidental regression as Google had previously switched from the bell to the speaker icon in Android 14.

Another icon change has also taken place, where the VPN icon is now thicker and filled in. This update, like the mute icon change, only appeared with the stable release of Android 17 QPR1.

The implications of these changes are unclear, but if they were intentional, we would expect Google to maintain them in future releases. However, if this was an error, it is possible that a fix may not arrive until the QPR2 update in December, which is scheduled for release later this year.