Android TalkBack: Volume Controls

Hi, my name is Ricky Enger. And today we're gonna learn about our volume control options with TalkBack. We're using a Google Pixel phone for our workshop here but what we're learning should be pretty much the same for a lot of other Android phones as well. Every phone is a little different though, so if things are in a slightly different place on your device, or if there are other little changes in how things work, that's okay. If you scroll down a little ways on the workshop page here, you'll find some great resources, plus there's info on how to contact us if you need to.

So we're learning something today that probably seems like a weird thing to even spend time talking about. You know, we have volume controls on the phone, so press the up button to turn the volume up and press the down button to turn it down. Okay, we're done. Thanks for listening. Except no, it actually is a little more involved than that.

The reason for that is because our phone makes a lot of noises in various ways, right? Not only do we have TalkBack doing its thing, but there's the volume of our music and YouTube videos and so on, and there's also the volume for our ringer and alarms and notifications. Instead of having just one control for all those things, we can actually customize each of them. So why would we even want to do this? Well, it can be kind of helpful, for example, if we're listening to some awesome music but still need to hear TalkBack to get around on the phone.

In that case, we might want our TalkBack volume to be louder than our music, right? So let's check out how this works. We'll start by just pressing our volume up button.

Google Assistant: Sound settings.

Ricky: All right, cool, that's a good start. Now, unfortunately, TalkBack doesn't actually place our focus on these controls; we've really gotta work for it. We can't swipe over to the controls either, so we need a general idea of where these things popup. So that volume button we just pressed, we're gonna find the controls on our screen right in that same area. So on this phone, our volume buttons are on the right side of the phone, about halfway up, so that's where our controls are gonna popup. Great, so when we press that volume button, we can just use our single finger and touch the screen right beside it to find our volume control. So we'll touch.

Google Assistant: Sound settings button.

Ricky: Okay, good, we landed on our sound settings button. We're definitely gonna come back to that later. For now, let's swipe left here.

Google Assistant: 20% media slider.

Ricky: Okay, great, that's for our music and YouTube and such. Now, before we swipe again, it's worth noting that this little volume popup actually doesn't stay on the screen forever. It'll disappear pretty quickly as we're talking here, so we just press the volume control again to get it back. Okay, we'll do that.

Google Assistant: Sound settings button.

Ricky: And we're just gonna show this one last control by swiping left from our media volume. So we'll swipe left.

Google Assistant: 36% accessibility slider.

Ricky: Okay, nice, this is where we can adjust our TalkBack volume. Now, again, these controls do disappear really quickly and sometimes it can be a little challenging to touch the right place on the screen. So now that we've acknowledged that, let's check out a couple of tips that will make this process a little easier and more consistent.

The first thing that's helpful to know is that if we press our volume button while TalkBack is talking, it's automatically gonna adjust that accessibility volume control without our needing to be focused on it. So if we're hoping to turn TalkBack up or down without messing with any other control, we just need to make sure TalkBack is talking and then we'll press our volume buttons until the level is right. Let's try it.

We're just gonna use our two-finger triple tap to start reading our whole screen here. And then as soon as TalkBack starts reading, let's just press our volume up button. So here we go. Tap, tap, tap.

Google Assistant: YouTube phone. Home screen two of two. Sound settings. Accessibility volume set to 80%.

Ricky: All right, yeah, that works great. So now what about everything else? How can we adjust our other volume controls consistently? Well, all these other volume controls are under our sound settings, so there are a couple of ways to get to that.

We can open our settings app and scroll down to sound settings; that's always gonna be consistent. We can also use the sound settings button from this little volume control popup we worked with earlier. Let's just do that real quick. So we'll press a volume button.

Google Assistant: Sound setting.

Ricky: All right, now we'll touch our screen right beside the volume button we just pressed.

Google Assistant: Sound settings button.

Ricky: Yay, there we go. So let's just double tap here with one finger.

Google Assistant: Settings panel. Sound and vibration.

Ricky: Okay, we made it. So the last thing we'll do today is just swipe through these options and see what we can adjust. So we'll just swipe right.

Google Assistant: Media volume in list.

Ricky: And swipe right again.

Google Assistant: 28% slider. [Google Assistant] Swipe up or swipe down to adjust.

Ricky: Awesome, so TalkBack gives us this great hint about how to adjust our level here. Now let's just keep swiping to find our other volume controls. So yeah, we'll just keep swiping and listening. So we'll swipe.

Google Assistant: Call volume in list. 67% slider. Ring and notification volume in list. 43% slider. Alarm volume in list. 67% slider. Settings button out of list.

Ricky: Okay, there we go. We've made it through all our possible volume controls. And for each of those sliders, we can just swipe up or swipe down with one finger to adjust.

Awesome, so we can easily adjust our TalkBack volume just by making TalkBack talk and then pressing our volume buttons, plus we can also find all our other volume controls quickly by checking out the sound settings area in our settings app or by tapping that button that appears in the volume control popup that we find right next to the volume button we press.

Yeah, it's kind of a lot to keep track of, but after playing around with these volume controls to get everything just right, it'll come much more naturally. Practice makes perfect for sure.

I'm Ricky Enger, and I'm glad you could spend a little time with me today learning volume controls with TalkBack. See you next time.