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Google's January patch for Pixels includes the glorious return of casting volume controls
After being initially removed from Android 12
Anyone who regularly casts movies or music in their home will gladly tell you how essential volume controls are on their phone. Unfortunately, Google removed the ability to pump up your remote jams natively in Android 12, something that initially seemed like a bug before the legal truth of it all came out. A workaround was spotted in development for Android 12L, but it looks like it'll no longer be necessary.
Android 12L beta brings back Cast audio control, but not how you were hoping
This was entirely expected, by the way
Ever since it was revealed that the restriction on controlling the volume of Casted content with your device's volume keys was imposed for legal reasons, we've been waiting for a workaround to come into view. The Android 12L beta seems to have it (or at least the initial form of it).
Google had to remove cast volume controls in Android 12 for legal reasons
A workaround is apparently coming with Android 12L
Throwing video to larger screens or sending audio to more powerful speakers is something you just expect to work on Android. Unfortunately, that changed with Android 12, and not being able to control the volume of casted content using a device's volume buttons has been a mystery ever since. When the problem was originally spotted in August, it was believed to be a bug in Android 12 Beta 3, but now we know otherwise. As reported by Mishaal Rahman, the issue in Android 12 is a legal one, as revealed in a comment by a Googler on a separate thread of Google’s IssueTracker.
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Android 12 is in for some huge design changes as part of Google's new design language Material You, and while we like most of them, a few parts just aren't looking too great. The new volume slider originally launched in Beta 1 was certainly included. With a finger-wide width, it looked comically huge. Thankfully, it seems Google agreed this design wasn't meant to last, as slimmer volume controls are now included in Beta 2.
Android gives you separate volume control for media, notifications, and alarms, but Google appears to be working on adding a fourth slider to the mix. The AOSP Android 11 code suggests that the company is at least considering to add dedicated volume control for voice assistants, including but not limited to Google Assistant.
Android 11 Developer Preview 3 has brought an extremely tiny change to the overflow menu for the Volume settings. Namely, they're now settings for Sound.
We've already covered well over 200 changes in the public betas of Android Q, but many of those are smaller tweaks that aren't quite important enough to be covered in dedicated posts. Following our coverage of Beta 1, 2, and 3, here are all the minor changes in Android Q Beta 4.
One annoying quirk with 2-in-1 Chromebooks (and Chrome OS tablets) has been with how volume controls work. The volume up/down buttons always stay in the same position, even if you flip the device around — for example, when I used to have my Asus C302 in tablet mode, pressing where the volume up button should be actually turned the sound level down. Thankfully, this papercut is close to going away forever.
Less than a month after the first one, Android Q Beta 2 has landed with a decent amount of changes in tow. Among those changes is a convenient new volume pop-up to control all of the different volumes without having to enter the settings app.
Imagine: you've plopped down on the couch and fired up Hulu on your phone, ready to watch your stories on the big screen using a Chromecast. But as the show starts, you're struck with a deafening wall of sound — you left the volume on blast the last time you were watching TV. Where's the remote? You have no idea.
The recently-released Android P developer preview 4 is meant to be one of the last two release candidates—according to Google's initial released timeline—and in general that means polishing up existing features more than introducing a lot of new ones. Even so, a few new tweaks are present in this latest build, like a new slider for controlling call volume in Settings -> Sound.
Since Android P's inception, we've written over 100 feature spotlight posts about various new changes Google has added in. Even in its third developer preview, lots of changes are still being added, but some are so minor they don't really warrant their own posts. However, if you like nitpicking every little thing like many of us, this might be the post for you.
Ten days have passed since we started digging into the Android P developer preview release, and while we've enjoyed many of the new changes and shared with you our five favorites, there are other modifications that left us scratching our heads a little. This is a developer preview, so things are expected to be buggy, some features could be experimental and could change with the next releases, but there are others that might be here to stay.
Android's separate volumes for media, calls, and alarms can be great in some situations and terrible in others. I'm sure many of you have tried to preemptively turn down the volume as a YouTube video is loading, only to set your phone to vibrate and have the video play at full volume anyways. Nine years after Android was first released, this problem has finally been solved.
The volume slider wasn't really something that people had been complaining about in previous versions of Android, but Google has gone and changed it anyway. The slider is now vertical, moving to the side of the screen. It's technically more intuitive, but it'll probably take some time to get used to. There are also several new features.
As we hit the last few days before Christmas, app updates from Google have gone from a firehose to a slow trickle. It's only natural that most of the developers don't want to ship any major updates right before their holiday plans for fear that they might be called in to fix a catastrophe. Hey, I've done it too. Nevertheless, there's a new version of Google Duo rolling out today. It probably comes as no surprise that this one isn't taking any unnecessary risks either. There are a few very minor tweaks to the interface. However, there is a little bit for a quick teardown, so let's get into it.
Slightly over a week ago, XKCD posted a comic highlighting Android's volume problem. Mainly that trying to turn down the media volume before media playback starts usually results in the ringer volume being changed instead. But as the old saying goes, "there's an app for that," and the app for this is VolumeSync.
Many of you have probably seen yesterday's XKCD comic about the laughably terrible state of volume controls on mobile devices. The issue is particularly bad in Android apps, and developers really need to do something about it. Quite honestly, it's embarrassing that this is still a problem in 2017.
The Galaxy S8 has a bigger focus on audio than any previous Samsung flagships. The speaker gets surprisingly loud, nice AKG earphones come in the box, and the onboard Bluetooth 5.0 enables features such as Dual Audio (the ability to stream to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously). In keeping with this theme, Samsung has just published a SoundAssistant app on the Play Store for Samsung devices running Android 7.0 Nougat+. It's pretty cool.