Here’s a look at the unreleased Pixel Tablet Pen’s hidden note-taking trick

When Google released the Pixel Tablet in 2023, evidence suggested the company had stylus and keyboard accessories in the works, but neither product ever made it to market. Last week, however, the tablet’s unreleased stylus — the aptly named Pixel Tablet Pen — mysteriously appeared on several online retailers. One of our readers got their hands on the device and confirmed that it works with Android’s built-in note-taking feature.

The unreleased Pixel Tablet Pen has this tail button, but according to early reports, it doesn’t work out of the box. It turns out the stylus must first be paired with the Pixel Tablet via Bluetooth for the button to function. To pair the stylus, you have to press and hold the button until the pen starts pulsing. Then, open Bluetooth settings and look for the Pixel Tablet Pen in the list of available devices to pair to.

After pairing, you then have to enable two settings:

• First, toggle the “force enable Notes role” option in Settings > System > Developer options. Reboot your device after doing so.
• Then, select a “default notes app” under Settings > Apps > Default apps. Google Keep isn’t supported, so you’ll have to use an app like Open Note or Notein.

Once this is done, the Pixel Tablet Pen’s tail button will actually work as intended. You should see a “tail button press” option in the Bluetooth device details page for the Pixel Tablet Pen as well as other options like “write in text fields”, “ignore all stylus button presses”, and “allow apps to show pointer while hovering.”

Here’s a video sent in by reader Charlie Callow demonstrating the tail button’s functionality. As you can see, when he presses the button, it launches his default notes app (Open Note) in a floating bubble.