Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 feature a speaker in their charging case.
- Right now, that speaker is used for Find My Device, and to sound audio alerts for things like when you’re battery’s low.
- Google seems to be working on a new audio alert that would signal when you’ve put your earbuds back in their case correctly.
How many times has this happened to you: You’re done listening to music, or your earbuds just need a charge, and you take them off and pop them in their case, only to get their alignment completely wrong? Maybe you’re getting the left and right buds swapped around and putting them in the opposite spot, or maybe they’re in the right case position but are turned around and not making contact with charging pins.
Most of the time, we notice pretty quickly and there’s no harm other than momentarily feeling a bit embarrassed, but it can suck if you come back later expecting to use your fully charged buds, only to still find them dead. Luckily for Pixel Buds owners, Google could be doing something about all this.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
With the Pixel Buds Pro 2, Google introduced a handy new feature, giving the earbuds’ charging case a speaker of its own. This lets you use Find My Device to not just trigger individual earbuds to produce sound so you can track them down, but also to locate the entire package when the earbuds are stowed away for charging.
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Beyond just that, you can enable the Other alerts option in Case Sounds settings to get audio alerts for things like when the battery’s running low or when you pair with a new device. Today we’re cracking open version 1.0.709452546 of the Pixel Buds app for Android, and poking around the code within, we discover what looks like work to bring an additional case sound to the Buds Pro 2: an audio alert when your earbuds are properly docked in the case.
Code
<string name="summary_bud_return_switch">When buds are properly placed in the case</string>
<string name="title_bud_return_switch">Bud return</string>In addition to those strings alerting us as to the nature of this feature, we also spot some markup that appears to indicate that the toggle for this option will appear in Case Sounds settings:
Code
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PreferenceScreen
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<com.android.settingslib.widget.TopIntroPreference android:title="@string/title_case_sounds" android:key="@string/key_case_sounds" />
<SwitchPreference android:enabled="false" android:title="@string/title_bud_return_switch" android:key="@string/key_bud_return_switch" android:summary="@string/summary_bud_return_switch" />
<SwitchPreference android:enabled="false" android:title="@string/title_all_others_switch" android:key="@string/key_all_others_switch" android:summary="@string/summary_all_others_switch" />
<com.android.settingslib.widget.FooterPreference android:title="@string/title_footer_case_sounds" android:selectable="false" android:key="@string/key_footer_case_sounds" />
</PreferenceScreen>Right now, that option’s not yet visible, and sure enough — we’re not getting any new audio alerts from our Pixel Buds Pro 2 case when using it after installing this release.
Frankly, a feature like this makes a lot of sense with earbuds like these; while some manufacturers implement keyed design elements that physically prevent you from putting your earbuds in the case wrong, Google doesn’t seem to have prioritized such concerns when building the Pixel Buds Pro 2.
Which one of these sets of earbuds is inserted in the case correctly, and which are in backwards? Wrong answers only.
Even if you get your buds swapped around, the case will still successfully grab them with its magnets and give the initial impression that they’re in correctly. It may not be until you actually go to close the case and it won’t fully shut that you’re able to work out that you got your earbuds in the wrong spots.
