No, you aren’t crazy: Chromecast volume control is missing in Android 12 for reasons

I’m not sure how many of you out there are on Android 12 right now, but for those who are, there is a missing element to the UI that you may or may not have noticed yet. I picked up on the issue right away when we loaded Android 12 on one of our in-house Pixels a few weeks back, but I chalked it up to a bug in the last beta release of the OS. It wasn’t until we got our Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro in for review that I realized this issue might be a bigger problem than I first thought.

Here’s the problem: for years, with Android phones, you could control your cast session volume at any point with the volume rocker on your phone. It was always part of the overall volume controls, just like your alarm volume, notification volume, or media volume. When a cast had originated from your phone, you could simply change that cast volume the same way you’d crank up (or down) your wireless earbuds.

With Android 12, that’s not the case. The only way I’ve found to actually change the volume from a cast session is to find a volume control in the app you are casting from. In YouTube Music, for example, if you click the Chromecast button, a pop-up will appear with a volume slider inside it. Additionally, you may choose to open the Google Home app and control your own speaker volumes from there, too. Neither of these solutions is as quick, simple or intuitive as what we’ve had in the volume rocker for years at this point.

Thanks to a post by 9to5 Google, it turns out Google has unofficially explained that this is due to a ‘legal issue.’ I have no idea what that means, but in a couple different places, internal bug reports refer to the issue and specifically point out that this feature was removed for legal reasons.

There’s some chatter in the thread pointing to the ongoing legal battles between Google and Sonos, and I’d be inclined to think this is likely what’s behind the change for now. Hopefully, the above-referenced solution that will come in 12.1 (Android 12L) will get things back to normal. For now, however, it seems the ability to quickly change your volume in a casting session will remain a bit stunted. It’s aggravating, sure, but remember this isn’t really a bug or an issue that Google actually needs to ‘fix’. When the legality is settled, we’ll likely see things go back to normal, here.