Android: Voice-enabled experiences automatically focus 'call' audio-type rather than 'media'

Bug Reports Engine Bugs
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#1

Reproduction steps:

  1. On an Android device; join an experience which has voice chat enabled.
  2. Use the volume buttons on your phone to attempt to increase or decrease the volume.
  3. Notice that Roblox has instead changed your ‘call’ volume rather than the ‘media’ volume.

This seemingly started occurring after the CoreGui update, which moved the microphone to the top bar. It is also worth noting that I have disabled Roblox’s access to my microphone on my phone to prevent accidental unmutes; just in case that is somehow related.

Expected behavior

While it may make sense for this to happen since voice chat is a sort of ‘call’. Nearly always, I, as a user, do not intend to change the volume of users speaking but rather the gameplay audio. This inconsistency in behaviour is also annoying as it only affects experiences with voice chat enabled, meaning I need to adjust my process to changing the volume based on that factor alone.

Some users may not even be aware that the default behaviour is to change the call volume. This can, therefore, also lead to users inadvertently changing their call volume and being confused or shocked when they get a real phone call, and their call volume is not what they expected at all! Treating voice chat like a call is great for customisation of different volume levels, but it shouldn’t be the default volume level to change when using the volume keys.

To clarify, ideally, if possible (IE: assuming the Android API supports it); voice chat should remain on the ‘call’ audio type yet should not be focussed as the main audio type so that the volume buttons should instead affect the ‘media’ audio type.

A private message is associated with this bug report

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#2

Thanks for the report! I filed a ticket in our internal database and we’ll follow up when we have an update for you.

#3

I don’t know if this is possible, but would it be possible to somehow merge the two, or make it an option? Some models of phones, specifically Samsung, have this issue where other audio is bit-crushed when a Call is active. This makes other sounds lower quality which is incredibly infuriating and makes turning off voice chat more appealing. I’m sure this doesn’t happen with every model of phone, but it’s at least happened to me.

I use an S10e, which is obviously not new by any standard, but it has received a software update in the past year, and the operating system isn’t too old (Android 12).