Last week, Google dropped the second beta of Android 15, giving us our first public look at new features like app pairs and private spaces. But the tech giant also quietly rolled out another update to Pixel phones, bringing back a useful volume feature that's been missing since 2021.
This feature allows you to fully control the volume of a Google Home speaker group made up of Google products while casting. So if you have Google speakers connected to your Pixel via Google Home, the volume menu will allow you to adjust the output of each speaker without having to go into the app you want to cast content from. In fact, Google removed this feature back in 2021 in response to Sonos' lawsuit.
Google Pixel 8a
A few years later, a California judge overturned the ruling in Sonos' favor. At the time, Google immediately re-enabled the option to add Nest speakers, Chromecast devices, and Nest displays to multiple speaker groups in Google Home. For users with multiple speakers in the Google ecosystem, this is a bit of a homecoming. However, one feature is still missing: the ability to control these speaker groups even when not in a specific media app.
As Android Authority explains, prior to Android 15 Beta 2, casting to a speaker group using a Nest or Google Home device on a Pixel device required you to remain in the casting app. So, if you want to send music from Spotify to one or more Google speakers, you need to stay in that app without opening any other apps to be able to control the speaker's volume via the volume rocker on the side of the speaker. Telephone. If you open any other application, you must reopen the casting application to control the speaker group. A bit inconvenient, isn't it?
Ahead of the new beta, other phones have been able to take advantage of full speaker group volume control, as the feature has been baked into Android AOSP (the base level of Android where manufacturers build their own versions) for years. Google's flagship phone is finally back on track.
