Code commits point to a scalable volume menu
The volume slider in stock Android and AOSP-based ROMs is anchored to your phone’s volume rocker — it’s a nice touch that makes the software feel like it compliments the hardware, as the volume dialog expands from where your finger pressed the physical button. Trouble is, the volume menu has a static height, so the realism of this effect is somewhat dampened when you have a phone with a larger screen, making the volume slider look relatively tiny as a result. Thankfully, this appears to be changing.
Code commits spotted by Android expert Mishaal Rahman suggest Google is working on a feature that will scale the volume slider’s height to match your screen’s dimensions — in other words, the slider will appear taller on larger phones and shorter on smaller ones. The engineer who authored the commit has asked other Googlers to verify the feature’s functionality with a simple test: “Press volume button up/down on a large screen device. Verify the slider is no longer short.”
Rahman uncovered this change while digging through the source code for Android 13 QPR3 Beta 1, which was recently made public. But this doesn’t mean the feature will be made available in the June 2023 Pixel Feature Drop — considering the timing, it could be more likely to arrive with Android 14. It’s also possible that this feature won’t be released until further down the road, if at all, as changes like this aren’t always guaranteed to see the light of day.
Still, Android’s volume menu appears to have become a priority for Google in recent versions. The Live Caption toggle was a neat addition, and word is Google may finally split the ringtone and notification volumes into two separate sliders, so there’s hope we may see a scalable volume menu relatively soon.
