Last week, Google dropped the second beta for Android 15, giving us our first public look at new features like App Pairs and Private Space. But the tech giant also snuck in another update for Pixel phones, bringing back a useful volume feature that has been missing since 2021.
The feature in question allows you to fully control the volume of Google Home speaker groups consisting 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 each speaker's output without needing to be in the app you're casting content from. Google actually removed this functionality back in 2021 in response to a lawsuit from Sonos.
Fast forward a couple of years, and a judge in California overturned the verdict favoring Sonos. At that time, Google immediately re-enabled the option to add Nest speakers, Chromecast devices, and Nest displays to multiple speaker groups in Google Home. It was a bit of a homecoming for users with multiple speakers within the Google ecosystem. However, one feature was still missing: the ability to control those speaker groups even when not in a specific media app.
As Android Authority explains, before Android 15 Beta 2, casting to a speaker group with Nest or Google Home devices on your Pixel device required you to remain in the app that you were casting from. So, if you were sending music from Spotify to one or more Google speakers, you'd need to remain in that app, without opening any others, to be able to control the volume of your speakers from the volume rocker on the side of the phone. If you opened any other app, you'd have to re-open the app that you were casting from to control the speaker group. A bit inconvenient, no?
Other phones have been able to take advantage of full speaker group volume control before the new beta, as the feature has been baked into the Android AOSP (the base level of Android that manufacturers build their own versions off of) for years. Finally, Google's flagship phone is back on track.
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