I love the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, but using them with the Pixel is a mess

I love the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. It’s no surprise – I’ve owned all four generations of the Pro Galaxy Buds, and I love them all. They’re comfortable, feel great to my ears, and have features I can’t find anywhere else. However, the experience is not perfect. Using the Galaxy Buds with anything other than a Samsung device has always been a compromise, but with the Buds 4 Pro, the experience is nothing short of broken.

I use the home screen widget for my Galaxy Buds all the time. If they’re connected to another device, tapping the widget is a quick way to open the Galaxy Wearable app, and doing so automatically connects the buds to my Pixel 10 Pro. It also features easy access to volume controls. Unfortunately, the widget is almost completely broken, as shown in the video above.

Use anything that isn’t a Samsung phone or tablet, and the widget will remove itself from your home screen as soon as you finish setting it up. I’ve tried it on multiple Pixel and Motorola phones, and the results are the same every time. There is a solution, but it is complicated.

The Galaxy Wearable app shows a carousel of tips for your earbuds when they’re connected. One of those tips suggests using a widget, and it includes a button to add it to your home screen. This shortcut works, so you can use it to get the widget working. The problem is that it only works once. Keeping the widget dismisses the tip, and I’ve never seen it come back, so if you accidentally remove the widget from your home screen, there’s only one way to get it back: reset the app.

If you find yourself in that situation, the only way to get it back is to delete the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro Manager app from your phone and unpair your buds. Once you do this, you can add them again and download the app again. After setting everything up, the widget tip should be in the carousel once again.

So far, there isn’t much chance of a lack of features when you use the Galaxy Buds with anything non-Samsung. You lose access to Samsung’s proprietary codec, so the sound quality isn’t as good, but that’s it. Everything else, from touch controls to voice commands, always worked, but that’s no longer the case.

Head gestures have been added to the Buds 4 and 4 Pro that let you accept and reject calls and respond with a nod to Bixby. Unfortunately, I can’t use it on my Pixel 10 Pro, and most Galaxy Buds 4 owners using Samsung phones probably can’t do the same. For some reason, head gestures aren’t required on only Samsung phones — it requires One UI 8.5, and unless you count the public beta, it’s only available on the Galaxy S26 series right now.

Broken widgets and weird requirements for head gestures don’t stop me from liking the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. They still look great and are significantly more comfortable than the previous generation, and I wouldn’t buy anything else. Still, I want them to be better, and in the case of widgets, I just want them to work.