Samsung has updated their SoundAssistant app on the Galaxy Store, which is typically the app you use to customize the sound experience on a Galaxy smartphone. This update goes a bit further, though, and lets you change up your volume indicator and apply some theme elements to it. It's a pretty neat update.
Samsung SoundAssistant
On a Galaxy S10, for example, SoundAssistant allows you to create custom scenarios of sound modes and settings depending on the time of day or where you are, plus apply EQ settings to your phone. That's really the tip of the iceberg, too, since it can do so much more, but you get the gist of it.
The latest update for the app has added a new customization option for your volume bar, which will now give you two options for Android's floating volume indicator, plus some theme color options. You can stick with the traditional horizontal volume slider that appears towards the top of your screen, or shift it to a vertical orientation off to the side of your screen.
This indicator can be dragged around your screen, and you can select from five different color theme options, or stick to the default theme that will match everything else on your Samsung phone. Personally, I think the vertical indicator looks much sleeker, and stays out of the way of your media more efficiently. Just grab the update from the Galaxy Store to get started.
What else can SoundAssistant do?
If you've never messed around with the SoundAssistant app, now's a great time to dive in. Besides the customization we've already mentioned, there are tons of other things you can tweak on your Galaxy phone.
Scenarios
Scenarios will allow you to personalize your sound settings based on some different factors. You can set up a home scenario (complete with an accurate icon for the scenario) that only happens during the times and weekdays that you select. Those scenarios allow you to automatically mute the phone or set it to vibrate, or only switch to vibrate mode when headphones are connected specifically during that scenario's times.
App volume
SoundAssistant also controls how your Galaxy deals with volume on your phone. There's a toggle for controlling media volume instead of ringtone volume, which I find a little more useful; my ringtone is either set at the same volume all the time, or on vibrate, so controlling how loud games and other apps will be makes way more sense.
You can also specifically set app volumes here, so if you always want your music app to play at 80% volume but you want YouTube to start at 20% volume, you can set that up here. You can also choose to always play an app's sounds through your phone speakers, even while Bluetooth headphones are connected. This can be useful to force apps to keep their sound on the phone instead of to a connected Bluetooth speaker while you're listening to music, almost mimicking Google Cast.
Lastly, you can adjust how granular your volume controls are. While the phone has 100 volume levels, you might want to control them in increments of 5 instead of 10, if you're very specific about how things sound. SoundAssistant allows you to adjust that step from 1 to 10.
Equalizers
Any good sound app lets you control how your music, well, sounds, and SoundAssistant is no different. There are some accessibility type settings, like forcing mono audio, reversing the left and right outputs on headphones, and specifically controlling your favorite media app with Bluetooth headphone controls, but you can set up EQs, too.
There are several preset equalizers that you can select, plus an audio upscaler for making lower quality music sound a bit better, a concert hall setting, and Dolby Atmos control.
If you're looking to really dig into the audio options on your Galaxy phone, check this app out if you haven't already.
When you connect each BT device, you should be able to set if you want Dolby Atmos ON or OFF. No use having Atmos enabled when you only use your phone’s speaker, but sound assistant should give the ability to AUTOMATICALLY ENABLE or DISABLE Atmos depending on the BT device connected. (For instance, if you have a mono BT earpeice, automatically DISABLE Atmos, but BT stereo earbuds or BT speaker, ENABLE Atmos automatically. But it doesn’t work. Either you must have Dolby Atmos enabled all the time or disabled all the time, unless you manually toggle it which is a PITA. You can save presets, but they do NOT disable/enable Atmos when changing BT devices except for the volume and EQ.
One thing that had been driving me nuts is that when I had my bluetooth headphones connected, if I took them out of my ears and put them on the table but didn’t disconnect, I didn’t hear any notifications at all. They all went to the headphones sitting on my desk. SoundAssistant gives you an option to turn that off. In Advanced Settings, turn off Alerts through Headphones and it will play notifications on the phone and headphones concurrently. Or in my truck, if I’m listening to the radio or XM or something else not bluetooth, I can still hear the notifications from my phone.