Google has now turned up with its Material You design language, first debuting with Android 12, launched last year. The volume panel is among the main focus points, as it is a feature that has stayed largely unchanged during all the subtle polish that Android has gone through over the years.
If the present volume panel is tapped via the volume rocker and tapping the three-dot menu, this gets replaced with 5 slim volume sliders for media, call, ring, notification, and alarm. There will also be 3 buttons, one to access the full sound settings, another one to close the panel entirely, and one more button which allows adjusting volumes by tapping. Adds the output switcher option when media is playing. This layout is borrowed in its direct form from the “Sound & Vibration” page under Settings through a feature referred to as “slices” and needs to be changed.
As Mishaal Rahman recently spotted over at Android Authority, apparently Android 15 is going to break the platform away from that traditional layout. Screenshots from the latest Android 15 Developer Preview 2 show a chunky, pill-shaped set of sliders for the volume inside a radically redone volume panel. A noticeable dot indicates the maximum volume, and a simple tap on a stream’s icon mutes it.
One of the key additions to the volume panel in Android 15 is collapsibility. You can expand or contract it with just a tap, so it stays pretty compact if, say, there’s no media playing. Also, there is a media output shortcut present.
There are even some playful animations added by Google to the volume panel. The stream name follows the movement of the slider and will be showing up next to it as the stream is being changed. Details in the interface like those are quite clear good signs of dedication from Google to Material design.
The functionality of the volume panel may also be expanded. Not an actively running test, the redesign seems to bring in more controls for spatial audio and “noise control.” This update is nowhere close to live without some code changes, not even in the Developer Preview. However, it could come at any time in a future beta and eventually make it to Android 15’s public release.