Thanks to Android developer Yogesh Dama, there’s a brand new app that brings at least one expected Android P feature, the new volume slider tool, to nearly all Android users. Or, at very least, the app – called Android P Volume Slider-P Volume Control – brings the aesthetics of that tool to any Android device running version 4.0.3 or newer. Of course, it would need deeper permissions than application developers have access to, without root, in order to actually implement the volume slider at a system level. That means users won’t be able to access the verticle slider from Android P simply by tapping their hardware-based volume keys. However, it can at least give the appearance and some of the functionality of the new slider that recently cropped up in the Android P Developer Preview 1 package.
Android P Volume Slider accomplishes that via a widget, or rather a set of widgets. The primary widget implants itself into the notification pull down and a tap on any of the icons of that widget causes a secondary volume slider widget to appear. Customization options are available so that users can decide which volume control options will be in that primary widget. Those include toggles for standard ringers, notifications, media, alarms, system sounds, in call volume, and Bluetooth volume. A secondary, home screen-based widget is also made available via the download to make accessing the controls easier from the home screen – and the selected options mentioned above apply to that widget as well. Meanwhile, other options within the app allow for various tweaks to the widgets aside from simply choosing which volume controls will be available. Icon toggle colors can be adjusted, as well as the position of the slider pop-up and how long the widget will stay on screen before disappearing. The color of the in-notification bar notification can be switched up too. That means that the widgets can more readily match up with whatever theming apps a user has installed to create their own unique look.
In the meantime, the app only costs $0.99 as of this writing. That seems pretty reasonable for a set of widgets that are as clean and nice looking as users might expect them to be from stock Android – and even if they don’t work exactly as they will with hardware volume keys in the official Android P. It also doesn’t take up much space, at around 3.56MB of internal storage used. So there really aren’t many reasons not to give this app a shot for anybody looking to capture that Android P feel just a bit earlier than others.
