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Comment by ajklsdhfniuwehf | Hacker News Reader

Those are still all better than mobile phones that have a dozen "volumes" and when you press the volume up when a video is just starting you might get lucky and lower the media volume, or you might have missed it for one microsecond and now you are stuck on ring or alarm or whatever volume while the video plays.

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Those never have enough increments for me. I'm always on the quietest end of the slider, and when I want to go quieter I always end up accidentally muting the sound. I have to resort to dragging the slider with my finger - I don't know what I would do without that ability.

On Android I installed an app that lets me scale the global volume for this. It's called "Precise Volume" and seems to work well. I wish I could tweak the "gamma" of the volume slider though: I want to make quiet side quieter without making the loud end quieter so that it works both with headphones and with other devices.

That's a compressor/limiter. A simple feature that for some reason no one seems to ever implement in any consumer app/player/device. There may be some android apps for that on XDA and for rooted phones only.

You can disable changing the ringer volume with the buttons. Then the volume buttons only ever control the media volume for apps, videos, etc. It’s so much nicer.

It’s in Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Change with Buttons.

I never want to change the ringer volume. I just set it to maximum in Settings and use the physical vibrate switch when I want silence.

depends on: android version. manufacturer customizations. and probably other things.

likely 90% of people will not even have that option.

i see it on android11+ with the samsung UI extras. There's no such option in the other 12 devices i looked at just now.

I cannot figure out how to adjust my iphone volume half of the time. I think there are two, one is the ringer, one is for the speaker? dunno.

I'm guessing it's probably similar to Android: it's context-specific; with nothing going on, you're controlling your ringer settings. Then you need to wait until music/a game is playing, then you can control the speaker volume. Want to get to the master volume controls? Have fun menu hunting.

That "context aware" concept has been changed for a while now, current versions of Android always have the buttons control the media volume. (If you are in a call, they control the call volume).

But now they changed it so it always controls the media volume by default on Android.

I've got an annoying thing - not sure if it's a bug, probably) where the media volume on my iphone maxes out. So there's a nonzero chance now of shitting myself when hitting the unmute buttons on autoplaying videos.

Which pairs great with autoplay videos in text based news articles you made the unfortunate choice to read on your phone in a quiet public place.

oxygenOs now by default always does media volume, you have to switch for ring tone volume. best change ever

funny thing. This WAS the default on android 2. go figure.

cyanogen always had this as an option.

add to that a Bluetooth complication where vendor X earphone volume increments don't match the mobile platform. On Android you need to enable a Developer Mode setting (Disable Absolute Volume) before you get back control. I don't think that scores well on UI design either!

Hell yeah. I have unreasonable amount of rage against that one haha

https://xkcd.com/1884/

Yep, millennial smartphone devs took that «master volume is bad» saying too serious.

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