January Update Brings Back Cast Volume Controls To Pixel Phones

January 2022 Android 12 update for Google Pixel phones started rolling out a couple of days ago, and it seems like it brings back cast volume controls. This has been spotted by Mishaal Rahman.

Cast volume controls are back for Pixel phones with January update installed

As some of you may know, cast volume controls have been removed with the Android 12 update. This feature was available on Android 11, and earlier versions of Android. You were able to change the volume of an ongoing Cast session by using volume buttons on your phone.

The change did manage to annoy a lot of people, understandably. Back in November, Google let everyone know that it was forced to disable that feature, that it didn’t do it just because. The reason was a legal issue, and Google promised it will bring it back with Android 12L.

Well, we won’t have to wait that long, as the feature is back now. Do note that you’ll only see the feature if you’re running a Pixel phone with the January 2022 update installed, with Android 12, of course.

Now, the feature may spread to other Android phones in the future, but we cannot confirm that. Another thing to note is that the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, ironically, do not have this feature.

The Pixel 6 & 6 Pro will get the feature back once they receive the January update

As some of you already know, the two phones were left out of the last security update. Why? Well, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are plagued with all sorts of bugs, and the December 2020 security update didn’t help.

Not only that it didn’t help, but it introduced some new issues. Google actually had to pull the December 2020 security update, and is now working on fixing all those bugs.

The company was unable to patch everything and included it in the recently-released January update. So, it promised to deliver a special update for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro devices at some point this month.