TL;DR
- Google is adding volume sliders to the ringtone, alarm, and notification pickers on Pixel phones.
- We found the change in an unreleased build of the Sounds app included with the Pixel 11 firmware.
- New strings also suggest Google is still working on a dedicated collection of vibration patterns.
Picking a new ringtone on your Pixel currently means choosing the sound first and worrying about its volume elsewhere. Google looks ready to make that process a little more convenient by putting volume controls right inside its Sounds app.
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In an unreleased build found in Pixel 11 firmware, we spotted volume sliders on the selection screens for phone ringtones, notification sounds, and alarms. This lets you hear a sound and adjust its volume without backing out to a different settings page. The build isn’t available through the Play Store yet, but the sliders were already working without any tinkering on our part.
There may be a more substantial addition in the works, too. New strings refer to a “Vibrations” tab and describe a collection featuring “familiar patterns and new, personal vibrations.” We couldn’t get this part working on a Pixel 9, so the strings alone don’t tell us when, or even whether, Google will release it.
Here are the code strings we found:
Code
<string name="tab_vibrations">Vibrations</string>
<string name="vibration_collection_description">Feel your Pixel come to life in this collection through familiar patterns and new, personal vibrations.</string>We first uncovered a vibration selector for Pixel ringtones and notification alerts back in January 2025, allowing the sound and vibration pattern to be chosen separately. That feature still hasn’t reached users, but its appearance in this newer build suggests Google may not have abandoned the idea after all.
⚠️ 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.
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