One of the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro‘s party tricks is the temperature sensor on the back of the device. This unique contactless sensor allows you to measure the temperature of objects using just your phone. To access readings from the sensor, you need to open the pre-installed Thermometer app, select the type of material you are scanning, hold the phone about two inches away from the object, and click the “Tap to measure” button. Google could soon make this process even easier by adding material auto-detection to the Pixel Thermometer app.

The Pixel Thermometer app v1.0.676362763 contains strings that indicate it will soon automatically detect the type of material being scanned.

As you can read from the strings, the Pixel Thermometer app will auto-detect the material, but it will also give users the option to manually choose the material being scanned.

The app will use tflite models to detect the material automatically. A previous update of the Pixel Thermometer app added a new UI that uses the camera viewfinder. So, it is possible that the app uses a combination of the camera viewfinder and the material detection models to detect what you are scanning automatically.

For reference, the screenshot below shows the current material selection screen in the Pixel Thermometer app.

We predict the auto-detect option will show up somewhere on this screen itself.

We tried activating the feature but haven’t had any luck so far. We’ll share screenshots if and when we get it working.