Hey Google, how about separate volume controls for Assistant voice & other media in Android 12?

Google Assistant has especially been giving a particularly hard time to Google Home users for a range of reasons since the past year or so.

We previously highlighted how many users kept bumping into the “Something went wrong” and “Sorry, I don’t understand” errors when giving out voice commands.

And now there are a bunch of reports stating that volume levels with the Google Assistant app have become a particular cause of bother on third-party Google Home devices like Bose Smart Soundbars.

This 100%. I’ve been saying this for the past 4 years I’ve owned GH products. Why the hell they can’t keep these seperate beyond me. Often my assistant will be hella loud or the music super quiet.
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Omg, right? Yes, I want to blast my music during the day. No, I don’t want you screaming at me at night when everyone is trying to sleep. Have some respect, Googs.
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Users complain that the Assistant voice is highly imbalanced and ridiculously loud when compared to other media being played, so much so that it causes major disturbances.

After all, smart home devices are meant to provide a greater degree of autonomy. And that is a principle that falls apart when users have to keep adjusting the Google Assistant volume levels just to not end up waking up their neighbors.

A solution for this issue is rather simple though, as suggested by some Redditors – add separate volume controls for the Google Assistant voice and other media so one can set a fixed volume level for Assistant.

This will allow one to conveniently change volume levels for all sorts of media without affecting the volume levels for Google Assistant. A simple yet elegant solution indeed.

However, it is worth mentioning here that Google doesn’t exactly have a clean track record when it comes to taking feedback from users about matters like these and actually implementing it.

This is pretty apparent from Google’s handling of a pretty similar case with Google Pixel users.

Facing continual annoyance from ringing notifications, Pixel users had demanded separate ringer and notification volume controls to curb disturbance. However, the pleads were left unheeded.

Hopefully, Google Home Assistant users won’t be treated similarly. Your best bet, for now, would be to give feedback through the Google Home/Assistant app vouching for separate volume controls and hoping for the best.

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