By Will Sattelberg
Publication Date: 2026-03-13 16:06:00
For over five years now, Pixel users have had a powerful tool built into their Recents menu: the ability to select text and images for quick copying, sharing, and more. With Android 16 QPR3, however, the images side of things is getting a pretty massive downgrade, and it’s not exactly clear as to why.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Select button in Recents on Pixel first rolled out back in the pre-release days of Android 11. Although Android has had a handful of visual overhauls since 2020, the actual utility of Select has remained the same, allowing you to highlight and copy text from any application in your Recents menu without actually diving into the app. The same is true for images, which, up until the past couple of weeks, would deliver options to copy, share, or save the image, alongside a quick link to Google Lens.
In the above examples, the first image is how the feature previously worked, while the second and third images are now what you’ll…
