long story short
- Android 15 is gearing up for a major redesign of the volume panel, making it foldable.
- Android’s volume panel lets you change the volume for media, calls, ringtones, notifications, and alarms.
- The volume panel’s UI is a few years old and doesn’t follow the latest material design guidelines.
Back in 2021, Google released Material You, a major improvement to the company’s design language. Material You design elements were first integrated into that year’s Android 12 version. While Android’s current design hasn’t changed much since then, it has received some minor tweaks in the several versions since. In the upcoming version of Android 15, Google finally plans to improve the system volume panel UI.
The volume panel appears when the user presses the volume key and then taps the three-dot menu at the bottom. The current design offers five different sliders for each volume stream. From top to bottom, these include media, calls, ringtones, notifications, and alert volume controls. A thin slider controls the level of each. In addition to the panel’s title, flow icon, and slider, there are buttons for opening Android’s sound and vibration settings and closing the panel. Finally, if there is any active media playback, a shortcut to open the Android Media Output Switcher will appear below the media volume slider.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Android’s current volume panel design is a carbon copy of the volume slider section below Settings > Sound & vibration. That’s because the volume panel is actually made up of “slices” – a feature introduced in Android 9 Pie – taken from this page.
However, the new volume panel UI that I was able to manually activate in the latest Android 15 Developer Preview 2 build is separate from this. The new volume panel design, pictured below, features thicker, pill-shaped sliders. A dot is placed at the end where the slider’s maximum value is, and the icon can also be clicked to quickly mute the stream.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
Android 15’s new volume panel is also foldable. Click the button next to the media volume slider to collapse or expand the panel. The volume panel is collapsed by default whenever there is active media playing. Otherwise, it will open in the fully expanded state.
The “Sounds and Vibration” header is also gone, replaced by persistent media output shortcuts. Previously, the media output shortcut only appeared when there was active media playing. The updated design displays shortcuts regardless of media playback status. However, clicking the shortcut does not open the media output switcher when there is no active media playing. Instead, the shortcut still seems to just tell the user which audio device is currently handling playback.
Google has also added some playful animations to the new Android 15 volume panel. As you can see in the video at the top, the stream name text moves with the slider, so you can always see the stream name as you adjust the volume level. Whenever you move the slider, the current volume level is also displayed in place of the icon.
In addition to the new design, the volume panel will offer additional controls such as spatial audio and “noise control.” However, I was unable to display these controls during testing. This updated volume panel design is not enabled by default in the current Android 15 Developer Preview 2 build, but Google may roll it out in an upcoming beta.