Volume++

Volume++ is a native Android app that replaces the stock system volume panel with a fully custom, themeable one, and adds per-app volume mixing that Android doesn't normally expose to the user.

What it does

Android's real volume panel is a single, fixed UI tied to whatever version of Android you're running, and it only lets you control per-stream volume (media / ring / alarm / notification) — never individual apps. Volume++ replaces that panel outright and fills in both gaps:

- A custom volume panel that intercepts the hardware volume keys. An Accessibility Service captures volume-up/volume-down presses before the system does, suppresses the stock panel, and draws its own floating overlay instead — with the same press-and-hold ramping behavior as the real thing. - Faithful recreations of every major Android volume-panel design, Android 7 through 15. The overlay isn't one fixed look — it can render the classic Android 7/8 top sheet, the Android 9–11 collapsed-edge-control-plus-"Sound"-sheet layout, Material You's Android 12 panel, and the Android 13/14/15 "Sound & vibration" sheet (including Android 15's redesigned "Audio will play on" media-output picker). You pick which version's panel you want, independent of the Android version actually installed on the device. - A live, on-screen WYSIWYG editor for repositioning every panel component (main panel, expanded sheet, output picker) per orientation by dragging it around the screen, and a color editor that lets you tap any element of the panel — background, slider fill/track, icons, accent, text, buttons — to recolor it, independently for each Android-version skin. - Per-app volume mixing, via Shizuku: the panel can show one volume slider per currently-playing app (not just per stream) and set that app's actual playback volume using a hidden system API, plus toggle whether an app is allowed to take audio focus at all — i.e. whether it's allowed to pause everything else when it starts playing, which is what makes true audio mixing between two apps possible. - Per-app volume choices are remembered for the life of a playback session and silently re-applied as the app's audio players churn (e.g. across screen off/on or backgrounding), so a level you set doesn't reset back to full the next time the app makes a sound — it only resets once the app's process is actually gone.

How audio mixing works

Normally, when one app starts playing sound, Android asks whichever app was already playing to pause or go quiet — this is called audio focus. It's why starting a YouTube video pauses Spotify. Mixing makes an app ignore those requests, so its sound keeps playing on top of everything else.

Under the hood, the Mixing tab flips the TAKE_AUDIO_FOCUS app-op for the app you toggle, via the privileged Shizuku helper (appops set <package> TAKE_AUDIO_FOCUS ignore). With that op ignored, the app's focus requests are silently dropped by the system, so nothing else is ever told to duck or pause on its behalf.

Using it:

- Turn on the switch for the app you want to keep hearing — for example, enable YouTube to keep hearing it while Spotify plays. - Enabling just one of the two apps is enough; you don't need to toggle both. - Restart playback in that app for the change to take effect.

Caveats:

- With audio mixing on, some apps may freeze, replay ads, or lose their pause/resume controls (media buttons and notification controls are wired to the focus system too). If an app misbehaves, turn its switch off to go back to normal. - Mixing runs through the Volume++ panel, so the Mixing tab is disabled while Use system volume control is on in the Overlay tab. Turn that switch off to re-enable mixing. - Shizuku must be installed and running, since the app's own UID isn't allowed to change another app's app-ops.

License

MIT