The company has been working on separating the currently unified volume controls for a while now
As we track Android 13 QPR3 Beta 3 for signs of what’s to come for June’s Pixel Feature Drop, we’re all already looking forward to what Google has in store for Android 14 this fall. One of the features that’s been requested for a while is separate ringtone and notification volume controls: while plenty of Android phones (including Samsung phones) offer them by default, Pixel users have gone without. It looks like Google is going to fix this with Android 14.
A post on the Google Issue Tracker from December 2021 that requested the separation of the volume sliders is now marked as “fixed.” Furthermore, a Google staff member confirmed on the same thread that this feature will make its way to the operating system with a future release, although they didn’t say when they’d drop. Indeed, 9to5Google is reporting that no changes have been spotted on Android 13 QPR3 Beta 3 or Android 14 Beta 1.1 just yet. More likely than not, the company may be bundling this with a future Android 14 beta, clearing the way for the separated sliders to debut with Android 14 stable.
It’s worth pointing out that the separated sliders appeared within Android 14 DP2 in March, though it wasn’t immediately visible after the update. Adding more context, Esper’s Mishaal Rahman noted at the time that separated sliders have been in the works since Android 13 QPR2 Beta, although accessing the feature required enabling a flag.
With Android 14 DP2, however, it looked like Google remotely enabled the flag, thus making them appear automatically without user intervention. It was also found that, despite the decoupling of the two sliders, setting the phone to vibrate would mute both the ringtone and notification volumes.
A quick gander through the rest of the comments on the issue tracker emphasizes the befuddlement of most users at Google for taking this long to include such a basic function. But it’s better late than never, as they say.
