How to Get Rid of the Notch on the Pixel 3 XL

So a big disappointment for a lot of people watching the unveiling of the Pixel 3XL is that fact that Google has followed suit with other manufacturers lately and added a notch to the display. And, to make matters worse, it seems there’s no way to remove it in the settings by turning the status bar black as some others do.

Thankfully though, that doesn’t mean you can’t still hide the notch.

Turns out that there is a way to hide it in the settings but it’s in the developer settings which are hidden by default. The issue though, is that this doesn’t pull up the status bar into the sides of the notch like other devices, but instead just makes everything to the left and right of the notch inaccessible–which is dumb. Personally, I’m going to just keep the notch for now, but if you wanted the larger Pixel and really can’t stand the notch, here’s how to hide the notch on the Pixel 3 XL:

  1. Pull down the notification shade and tap on the gear icon to get to settings.
  2. Tap on System.
  3. Tap on Advanced.
  4. Tap on About Phone.
  5. Repeatedly tap on Build Number until it tells you that you are a developer.
  6. Tap back and tap on the new Developer Options.
  7. Tap on Device Cutout and you can select hide (you can also mess with the other options for some other weird versions instead).

That’s all there is to it. Now, your Pixel 3XL will at least look less like every other notched device out right now (but also you lose the extra screen real estate, which is annoying).

Hope this helped some people. Let me know if it did in the comments below!

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