Android 15’s “adaptive Vibrations” Change Depending on the Environment
In phone notifications, somewhere between beeps and silence, there’s a vibration: a way of receiving incoming alerts that you’ll notice, but that no one around you will notice (at least in theory—if your phone is on a glass table, everyone will notice). I’ll definitely hear it). While there are no statistics on how many people always set their phone notifications to vibrate only, I’m guessing it’s a pretty high percentage.
Vibration gets smarter with the release of Android 15: Google’s operating system update includes a setting called “adaptive vibration” that adjusts the intensity of your phone’s alerts based on environmental conditions. Therefore, if you are in a noisy place, the vibration may be stronger; if your phone is in your pocket, it may be softer.
You may have had occasions when you were in a very quiet place and your vibrating phone made almost the same noise as the ringtone. Or maybe you were in a very noisy environment and didn’t notice your phone buzzing at all. These are the problems that adaptive vibration is trying to solve.
How to enable adaptive vibration on your Pixel phone
You can find adaptive vibration in Android 15 on your Pixel phone by going to Settings, then selecting Sound & vibration , Vibration & haptics , and then Adaptive vibration . According to Google , you need a Pixel 7 (released in 2022) or newer phone, otherwise you won’t see this menu option.
The next screen explains how adaptive vibration works: essentially, it uses sensors on your phone and microphone to sense what’s happening around you. None of this information is stored or sent to Google. Turn on the adaptive vibration toggle and you’re good to go.
Based on the times I’ve enabled this feature, it works quite well: it’s not always flawless, but most of the time it strikes the right balance with the strength of the noise. Luckily, there is a big difference between the most and least intense vibrations, meaning they can be tailored for a wide variety of scenarios.
We’ll have to wait and see how Samsung and other phone makers implement the Android 15 feature on their devices once the software update rolls out. Currently, One UI 6 (based on Android 14) does not have a similar customization option.
How to Access Other Vibration Settings on Android
Android has other vibration options, although not as many as we’d like. If you go to Settings and select Sound & Vibration and then Vibration & Haptics , you’ll see sliders to adjust the strength of vibration for calls, notifications, and alarms (you can set the slider to zero to turn off vibration for certain type of alerts). ).
What you can’t do is set different vibration strengths or patterns for individual apps—app developers can do that, but you’ll get whatever vibration type they choose. You can toggle vibration on and off for specific apps, but that’s the only level of customization offered. To do this, open Settings , tap Apps , then select an app, then tap Notifications to turn vibration on or off.
Other ways to set vibration on Android
This functionality gap is filled, at least to some extent, by an app called Buzzkill , which will cost you $3.99 on the Play Store. It’s a comprehensive notification manager that allows you to set all sorts of custom rules for alerts, and these rules can include different vibrations for different apps and even for different types of messages (for example, messages that mention a certain word).
If you’re using Android on a Samsung, you can change the vibration pattern, but this is a global setting that applies everywhere—you can’t set different patterns for different apps. From the Settings menu, select Sounds & Vibration , then Vibration Pattern . Select any option from the list to preview what the vibration will sound like on your phone.