Having rolled out to a wide swath of Android devices, Google Play Protect tries to live up to its name by combining Android’s Find My Device feature and automatic virus scanning, among other features, to better protect your devices. As well-intentioned as the feature is, however, it looks to have led to Bluetooth issues on the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus.

The general gist is that Google Play Protect flagged an app called Bluetooth Share 7.0 as something unsafe. The app is then disabled and Google Play Protect then asks folks whether they want to remove the app. Once they say yes, the app is then removed, which has led to several reports of Bluetooth failing on the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus running Android 7.0 Nougat.

See also:

Google Play Protect program will label Android devices as “safe and secure”

Google Play Protect program will label Android devices as “safe and secure”

2 weeks ago

The good news is that there is a fix for the issue, which involves resetting your application settings. Bluetooth Share 7.0 is a system app, which means Google Play Protect cannot permanently remove it from the devices. Even though it is not as simple as re-enabling the app, you can reset all application settings by going to Settings, then Applications, and finally to Reset Application Settings.

This should do the trick until Lenovo and Google get together to push out an official fix, since resetting all your application settings means, well, messing up settings for your other applications. In the meantime, if you have been affected by this bug, let us know if the fix works for you.