Android bugs and glitches pop up frequently enough that they aren’t all worthy of coverage, but every once in a while, we see a bug so inexplicable it deserves to be highlighted. Earlier this week, a Reddit user discovered that whenever they typed “the1975..com” (with two periods instead of one) into the Google search bar on the default Pixel launcher, a collection of their recent text messages suddenly appeared on the screen through Google.
“It’s like just about the weirdest glitch I have come by,” they said. “Is this combination just a super random coincidence or is there something else going on? Are other people getting this glitch? I’m really confused, let me know.”
As it turns out, hundreds of other Android users were able to replicate the bug by typing the same unusual address into their search bars. Samsung, HTC, OnePlus, LG, and Huawei users all confirmed that they saw a list of their text messages as well, which makes it look more like an Android issue than a specific hardware problem.
To make matters weirder, yet another Reddit user found that searching for “Vizela Viagens” (a travel agency in their hometown) resulted in the same bug. Dozens of users confirmed that they were able to see their text messages this way as well, and some even realized that misspellings of the travel agency worked too.
Being able to quickly access one’s text messages through the search bar on Android is a feature, not a bug, as one Reddit user pointed out on the thread. All you have to do is search for “my text messages” and you’ll be redirected to your texts. But why other random queries can accomplish the same goal is anyone’s guess.
