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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Only thing I miss is the Samsung volume control.

On the Pixel it has a singular context aware volume control that doesn't work very well. I've loaded YouTube, pressed volume up/down, and had my ringer volume change more times than I can count.

Even on iOS which has a similar context aware volume control the experience is superior since you can also change the volume from the dock and disable the setting titled "[Ringer] Change with buttons" so it doesn't do anything until media is in focus.

I rarely need to change my ringer volume, I just need a quickly accessible way of going into "Do Not Disturb"/Silence mode for the cinema and meetings. Samsung even offers that from the power menu which is super convenient.

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Specifically the youtube experience you describe is a problem in the youtube app itself, not in base Android. Youtube for some contrived reason decided to make it so that Youtube doesn't advertise itself as an audio player until its playing audio. Whenever you aren't playing a video it doesn't show up as a media controller so the system won't have the volume keys change the media volume.

It used to always advertise being a media player so any time the app was active the volume buttons default changed the media volume. They just broke it intentionally.

The Youtube app is broken because of that reason. Can't even play when screen is off. Absolutely braindead...

Well, that's just part of their YouTube Red service they're trying to sell.

I use NewPipe[1] for that. It has background and popout modes, including a queue for the background mode, and an option to speed up the video which is perfect for lining up a couple of lectures and listening to them as if they were podcasts.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

YouTube used to be able to play with the screen off, but Google has locked this behind a YouTube Red subscription at $10/month.

Can't watch ads if you screen is off!

Thanks for the info. Although the reason is even more stupid then I thought...

It's stupider than you think. If you're a Red subscriber and you visit, say, the UK, then suddenly you can't play videos in the background any more.

It's even stupider than that.

When I first subscribed to Google Play Music, in the UK, it included "YouTube Music Key", which had the same feature to allow YouTube videos to play in the background, and it worked just fine in the UK.

Then they rebranded YouTube Music Key to YouTube Red, and since YouTube Red isn't available in the UK for legal reasons unrelated to backgrounding YouTube videos, they disabled the backgrounding feature in the UK, even though UK subscribers are still paying for a YouTube Red subscription (that cannot be used in the UK).

OK, stop. You've convinced me. Software programmed by attention merchants (advertisers) and IP prostitutes (lawyers) instead of engineers is stupid.

Try "media volume only"[1]. I use it and it claims not to drain battery and it is open source. This should be a setting imo.

[1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=catchpower.gog...

I'd go so far as to say it should be the default!

With the new-ish priority mode and "do not disturb" modes, I change my ringer volume about as often as I change my "alarm" volume (which is almost never).

I only ever change my media volume, and thanks to apps like that one it can become the default.

I would welcome the change. Yeah I actually have my alarm volume locked using "volume lock" do to accidental changes by others.

If you just want the volume buttons to always control media volume, there's an app for that. 'Rocker Locker' is frequently recommended. Samsung SoundAssistant can also enable this behavior, among other things.

Rocker Locker drains battery since it has to be persistent. Samsung SoundAssistant is only available on Galaxy devices, it isn't compatible with the Pixel.

There's an option for that in the settings. Not entirely sure it's in AOSP, not just LineageOS, but ISTR last time it came up it wasn't just custom ROM users who could find it.

On my phone it's under Settings -> Buttons -> Volume buttons -> Control ringtone volume.

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