Android 15 Beta 2 fully restores cast volume control for speaker groups on Pixel phones

Last week, Google announced the second beta of Android 15, bringing long-awaited features like Private Space, App Pairs, Predictive Back and more. The second beta also quietly introduced a revamped volume panel UI, but that didn’t surprise us too much since we already knew it was coming. However, the second beta surprisingly brought back a volume-related feature that we weren’t sure would ever return on Pixel phones: the ability to control the volume of speaker groups during casting!

If you create a speaker group in the Google Home app that consists of one or more Assistant-enabled devices, you can cast audio to that group from your phone using a Cast-enabled app. For example, let’s say I create a speaker group called “Nest Hubs” that consists of my bedroom Nest Hub and my living room Nest Hub. If I open the YouTube Music app, start playing a song, and then tap the Cast icon, I can select Nest Hubs to start playing on both Nest Hubs at the same time.

If I keep the YouTube Music app open, I can control the volume of my speaker group by pressing the volume buttons on my phone. This functionality is available regardless of which device I use. However, if I open another app while streaming YouTube Music, whether I can still control the volume of my speaker group using my phone’s volume buttons depends on which phone I’m using and what software version it’s running. When I use a Pixel phone running a software version earlier than Android 15 Beta 2, I cannot control the volume of my speaker group unless I reopen the YouTube Music app. When I use a phone from another manufacturer, I can easily control the volume of my speaker group.

The reason for this strange discrepancy is because Google intentionally prevented Pixel devices from controlling the volume of Google Home speaker groups while broadcasting. Google did this out of an abundance of caution while it fought a legal battle. Back in 2020, speaker maker Sonos sued Google for alleged patent infringement. This resulted in Google removing several features from its Nest speaker and smart display lineup, but also resulted in the removal of speaker group volume control from Pixel phones. Other Android phones were not affected by this change, as only Google was named by Sonos in its lawsuit, which is why only Pixel phones were unable to control speaker group volume outside of the broadcasting app.

However, in late 2023, a California judge overturned the jury’s verdict in favor of Sonos. Google responded by immediately re-enabling the ability to add Nest speakers, displays, and Chromecast devices to multiple speaker groups. However, they never reintroduced the ability to control the volume of speaker groups via a Pixel phone, at least until now. With the release of Android 15 Beta 2 last week, we can confirm that Google has finally restored this functionality.

Google introduced this at the end of 2021 config_volumeAdjustmentForRemoteGroupSessions Flag that determines whether “platform-level volume adjustments are enabled for remote sessions on grouped devices.” The default value of this flag is set to true in AOSP, but has been explicitly overridden to false in Google’s Android builds for Pixel devices. However, this is no longer the case in the Android 15 Beta 2 builds for Pixel phones, which is why speaker group volume control finally works.

Another casting-related feature still missing from Pixel phones (but present on other Android devices) is the Stream extension. If you stream music to any speaker and then open the media output switcher, you should be able to select additional devices to stream to. This is the case on several non-Pixel devices I’ve reviewed, but it’s not the case on any of my Pixel devices, including those running Android 15 Beta 2. This functionality should hopefully be restored to Pixel devices in the future, but we’re not sure when that will happen.