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The worst volume control UI in the world (2017)
- avierax 5y agoDoes anyone remember the name of the music video in the examples?
- Crosseye_Jack 5y agoTwitch watch parties. Ok you do have independent control of the two video streams (at least on desktop, I’ve not used it a ton on mobile) but one slider is in the normal twitch position and the other is behind a volume button. Making small tweaks because of the streamer getting loud (I do use ffz’s compressor but it’s not a miracle worker) or cause the audio isn’t of the video is greatly balanced to begin with (looking at you Invincible..) is a pain in the arse… /me tableflip
- FroshKiller 5y agoThis started out entertaining, then I realized that there is no attribution for the designs, and even though there are several links that say things like "the original thread," they are all just links to search results for "volume" on the ProgrammerHumor subreddit.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoI am usually one to call out unattributed art, but in this case (IIRC) the ProgrammerHumor community is the source of this trend. You can confirm this by pasting the URL of any of these images to tineye.com and sorting by 'oldest' to check when the image first appeared online, eg: https://tineye.com/search/af9c3fe10f5da6775143aa30a421733c4fc344c6?sort=crawl_date&order=asc&page=1 https://tineye.com/search/af9c3fe10f5da6775143aa30a421733c4f...
- Sharlin 5y agoIt never was a single thread but a meme that lasted for a while, with people making lots of different top-level posts. So linking to search results is the best you can do.
- egypturnash 5y agoYou could... link to the particular post, instead of the search you found it in?
- Sharlin 5y agoGood point :D
- seattle_spring 5y agoWould attributing the posts to random Reddit names provide much value? If I knew the 3rd one was from /u/potato_up_my_rectum, it's not like I would go seek out his other art or work.
- FroshKiller 5y agoThe point of attribution is to give credit to the creators. It's an intrinsically valuable act. You might not go look at their other posts, but I might. And if I were one of the creators whose work was taken to add value to someone's blog post, I'd appreciate the courtesy.
- arriu 5y agoThe one asking the user to make noise as loud as you want the volume to be made me laugh but it does have a hidden feature... It will never be lower than ambiant noise. Perhaps a desireable feature?
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoSome sort of “set to X decibels louder than ambient noise” feature would be pretty amazing, actually.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- slacktide 5y agoMy car does this and it's annoying as crap. Luckily it is easily disabled. Audi calls it GALA - "Graduated Audio Level Adjustment."
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y agoI would think the best version would just be a button you push when you want to adjust the volume to a “reasonable” level. I agree that continuously varying the volume would be annoying.
- Sebb767 5y agoIn my VW it's linked to the car speed and I would not want to give this away. Turning the volume up and down when entering the highway or a slow stretch was really annoying on my old car.
- acomar 5y agoit's also remarkably intuitive. like I laughed and then realized that would be a fairly pleasant way to control the volume for anyone with decent vocal control.
- runawaybottle 5y agoIt made me laugh too, but imagine if you were blind. Would be about as simple as it would get to set the volume in that case.
- jeffbee 5y agoThe worst one I've seen in actual practice was that of the Openmoko Neo Freerunner, which I saw at a mobile industry tradeshow years ago. The guy, and I must stress this the type of nerd who thought Openmoko was pretty good, had to open up a teensy little xterm and run alsamixer before making a call. So bad.
- leephillips 5y agoThat’s awesome in its own way.
- normac2 5y agoThe Clippy one gave me physical shudders. Traumatic memories...
- webwielder2 5y agoApple won this back in 1999: https://i.imgur.com/V9WQ8Gc.png https://i.imgur.com/V9WQ8Gc.png
- bashinator 5y agoOooh, so that’s where the allergy to skeuomorphism comes from.
- deaddodo 5y agoMight be useful if you pointed out what you’re referring to. I assume it’s the little volume control on QuickTime player?
- icedchai 5y agoIt took me more than a few seconds to even find the control. I guess that's why it's so bad!
- Sebb767 5y agoTo be honest, without reading the comments I actually would not have realized that there's a volume control visible on this screen.
- perryizgr8 5y agoYes, it was extremely difficult to adjust accurately.
- runawaybottle 5y agoThe insanity of the false intuitiveness is hilarious. So let me get this straight, you need pixel perfect accuracy to reduce the volume to lowest, but not as much to increase it to the highest? How was this delineation determined?
- hnick 5y agoSpeaking of Apple, it is more than a little frustrating that if I start driving with Google Maps, and I realise it's too quiet, the volume control changes the Ringer instead of the media volume unless I time it to be while she is speaking. Which is kind of tough if it's really quiet, and hard to catch during shorter snippets anyway. I remember on Android when the app had focus it'd always change the media volume in these situations. I'm not sure which of them to blame!
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI actually love the advanced volume control one with all the numbers.
- chapium 5y agoI think it could be improved, but 2d space being is pretty genius here. Rows for major changes, and columns for minor adjustments. Still overly engineered for something that can be just a single slider.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoBut the slider is usually so small! At best we are talking 10 steps of volume accuracy with a mouse (probably more like 5) and it is never reproducible. With the big boy I can hit 67 or whatever my favorite volume is every time.
- Nition 5y agoIt'd certainly save pedantically trying to move the mouse one pixel to select 50 instead of 51.
- rectang 5y agoNearly all volume controls suck because by and large the software world is ignorant of the fact that loudness scales logarithmically. 99.9% of volume controls scale the output linearly.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoI used to own a BlackBerry 10 phone running BB10 OS. At the time, the dev team accepted suggestions on how to make the OS better, and I suggested they make the volume controls logarithmic instead of linear, and they did! I loved how quiet that phone would go while still remaining clear—I used to listen to audiobooks as I fell asleep at night, and rather than use headphones I would just set the volume to level 1 or 2 and put it on my pillow beside my ear. I haven't been able to do that with any other phone since because the volume doesn't go low enough, or if it does the audio is muddy.
- na85 5y agoI still have my old BB10 Passport. Weird form factor but that was an awesome device. It's too bad Blackberry really shit the bed with their OS and its lack of apps.
- AussieWog93 5y agoI still use my BB Classic as a daily driver. Really not looking forward to next April when 3G is switched off in Australia...
- frosted-flakes 5y agoThe Classic supports 4G, you know.
- AussieWog93 5y agoI know, mate. But no VoLTE. You still need 3g for voice.
- temporallobe 5y agoCar manufacturers are easily the winners here. If your car’s audio system doesn’t have a simple knob you can grab and twist, well, that just sucks.
- jeffbee 5y agoI can twist mine as much as I like, but the radio comes on instantly and the software that cares about the volume knob being twisted starts about 3 seconds later.
- jiggawatts 5y agoI had one that would work, but only if you rotated the knob very slowly. So if you turned the car on and the music was deafening, you had to oh-so-slowly turn down the volume with one hand, while trying to staunch the bleeding from your ears with the other hand.
- dmitshur 5y agoWhile an awful situation, I couldn’t help but laugh very much at how ridiculous it is. Thanks for this comment.
- TchoBeer 5y agoThat's hilariously bad design
- mmoskal 5y agoThe rotary encoders typically require quite fast sampling (~1000Hz) to be reliable when turning fast (it can be also done in hardware though). They are probably running a whole RTOS on that poor microcontroller that controls radio, so can’t afford so much processing power ;)
- mikewarot 5y agoIn our Subaru, the radio comes on, but you can't turn it off for at least 10 seconds, and then it might come back on, depending on exactly how many times, and when, you tried to turn it off earlier.
- jsemrau 5y agoThe Rick Astley one resonated with me. I recently moved countries and now a lot of websites I frequent switched automatically to the new country; which is really annoying.
- enumjorge 5y agoThis article seems to be a regurgitation of a thread from Reddit.
- blamazon 5y agoThis case was a “thread storm” instead of a single thread. Each post was a different thread over days/weeks. Challenging to link. I remember it happening live and the endless up-anteing was amazing! Just when you thought the trend was dead someone would drop a new more elaborate take.
- monkeybutton 5y agoChallenging to link indeed. The post is from 2017 and their link is to a search results page that shows unrelated stuff. Some from just a few days ago, it was kinda disappointing.
- ranvel 5y agoIn fairness, it's lightly curated, or perhaps just misses a bunch.
- beezischillin 5y agoThe iPhone lovingly reducing the volume claiming to protect your hearing (a feature that seems impossible to disable even after changing the phone’s region) as an added iOS 14 feature was a volume control “option” that I found annoying and insanely unsafe. I don’t even think there was initially an option to disable it for specific outputs. The best part was at that stage when it kept nearly muting itself in my car while I was driving and had the windows down, taking my attention away from the road forcing me to fiddle with the volume up button. I know that it’s possible to mark each individual output as “other” now but it’s still kind of insane to force this on users.
- machello13 5y agoWhich regions have this? I'm in the US and haven't seen it.
- beezischillin 5y agoI’m in the EU (unsurprisingly). More specifically it’s this feature: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211903 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211903 See also: https://piunikaweb.com/2021/01/28/ios-14-2-update-disables-option-to-turn-off-headphones-safety-setting/ https://piunikaweb.com/2021/01/28/ios-14-2-update-disables-o... “Reduce loud sounds automatically“ cannot be turned off here, not even if you change your region. The only real solution is to keep classifying Bluetooth sound outputs and lighting adapters manually when you connect a new one. I’m fairly certain that even that feature was added in after they implemented the main automatic volume limit thingy because I remember looking through every option and forum for a solution. It for me annoyed enough that I was considering going back to Android at that time.
- temp8964 5y agoThe worst volume control in the real world is Bluetooth on cars. Somehow every time I connect to my car the volume gets lower. Now I have to turn it up to the max to hear a little bit. I have tried all the methods on internet with no success.
- judge2020 5y agoWhat car? Tesla actually seems to have gotten this part of the Bluetooth implementation right and it syncs the car’s volume with your phone’s volume.
- deaddodo 5y agoBluetooth as a standard has the audio device tell the master device what volume it is set at. For whatever reason, devices are almost universally terrible at managing this. For my WH1000 (it’s been the same with the XM2, XM3 and XM4 models), if I switch from my phone to my laptop, the laptop will leave the volume label set to say 80, but set the devices actual volume to 20. The quick fix is to pair it back to the phone, turn it all the way up and resync to the laptop.
- roland35 5y agoThe subreddit /r/Programmerhumor sometimes had a whole bunch of memes around volume controls, but there are often times other funny themes that can go on for weeks... - bad phone number inputs - how large node packages can get - software interview process - backend vs front end engineers And my favorite meme was when they parodied the Hawaii missile alarm back a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/7qk25w/an_actual_screenshot_of_the_hawaii_missile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/7qk25w/an_...
- mgdlbp 5y agoThere's an entire subreddit for bad UI: https://www.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/top/?t=all
- nayuki 5y agoI like the volume control with imaginary numbers: https://www.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/ey74ya/volume_control_without_boundaries/ https://www.reddit.com/r/badUIbattles/comments/ey74ya/volume...
- omnicognate 5y agoShame that community isn't hosted somewhere with a better UI.
- WalterGR 5y ago> bad phone number inputs That's exactly what this post reminded me of. The bad phone number input 'prompt' is, I'd say, classic at this point. I don't know which URL started it all, but here are a couple: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/651hfm/i_solved_the_problem_for_phone_number_input/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/651hfm/i_s... https://imgur.com/a/4f3XB https://imgur.com/a/4f3XB Bonus HN posts: Show HN: I've made a rotary dial number input, because why not? (2019) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21234891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21234891) 190 points 86 comments Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11321236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11321236) 236 points 122 comments Google's phone number handling library (2014) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8574080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8574080) 284 points 42 comments
- Zak 5y agoClippy may be a joke, but my phone actually does this (and yours likely does too). In principle, if my headphone volume was actually loud enough to damage my hearing, I'd like to be told about it, but a given reality is the volume setting doesn't produce the same loudness with different headphones, which usually results in an inconvenience when my headphones aren't actually very loud.
- grawprog 5y agoThe worst is newer versions of android. You turn it up full, suddenly it's down to 3/4's full again and you have to acknowledge you want to turn it up, then turn it up again. If the headphones unplug, you gotta turn it up again. The same thing happens with brightness too. Turn it up full, suddenly, down to 3/4's again until you acknowledge yes, you really do actually want to turn your brightness up full. The first time it happened I was outside in the sun and couldn't actually see my screen to figure out why it dimmed again, i kept trying to brighten it and it kept dimming, I finally noticed the popup on the bottom in the brief second of lightness I had after the 4th or 5th try. I really hate the way devices try to control you rather than allowing you to control them. On my old rooted android phone from years ago, I had alsamixer installed and could turn the volume up however I pleased, even above the artificial software limits present in all android versions. I miss those days.
- Zak 5y agoThe first couple documented solutions for the volume warning on my new rooted Android phone didn't appear to have any effect. The volume warning is required by EU regulations, so it's hard to blame the OS maker for that. I do, however blame Google for increasingly trying to discourage rooting and providing facilities to app makers to prevent their apps from running on rooted devices. They could, however have implemented the volume warning in a manner easier to defeat.
- grawprog 5y agoAs far as I know, the audio functionality gained by rooting is no longer possible in newer android versions. I don't understand why the concept of 'rooting'(as it applies to android) exists. I purchased my phone, with money, why in the actual fuck are there hundreds-thousands of folders and files my pocket computer will not let me touch? I'm really tired of the 'safety before freedom' mentality that seems to exist these days. Humanity's managed to exist this long without being nanny'd and the people trying to do the nannying are also human.
- fomine3 5y agoYouTube Music on browser only offers single usable volume level: mute+1. Upper is not usable since volume is too high. (So some of "worst volume control" on article is better than this since it's somewhat configurable). It is really weird since YouTube on same browser offers wide range of usable volume level.
- stefan_ 5y agoI think the worst UI is simply the Teams one, because it presents as an app volume control but then simply controls the global device volume. Fuck off, you are not the only app running. But that comes second to the microphone gain control, which Teams similarly exerts unilateral control over - only this time through an automated algorithm that for some microphone types just ends up muting them entirely. It's wild, you can go into the Windows gain control settings and see the slider wiggle around.
- varenc 5y agoI understand the motivation. A user might set an app's volume low and raise the system volume very high to compensate. But then audio from another program, likely Teams, might blow your ears out when it starts. In a vacuum, I like the idea, but given that the standard on Desktop is in-app volume control Teams' behavior sounds worse. In iOS I've never seen an in-app volume control (I assume its forbidden) and all volume adjustments affect the system volume.
- reificator 5y ago> In iOS I never seen an in-app volume control (I assume its forbidden) and all volume adjustments affect the system volume. Typically games will have them so you can balance out music and interface sounds relative to in-game sounds. In my opinion a volume mixer is a requirement for a decent user experience. To reuse the game example: if I want to listen to a podcast while playing, I'd better be able to hear the podcast clearly while also hearing the important sounds from the game.
- _carbyau_ 5y agoGaming with friends online. 1. Upon first open of the game, turn the music volume to off or 10%. 2. Make any other game noise 30% max. 3. Enjoy being able to play and hear game, while also being able to hear friends on Mumble at reasonable volume.
- HelixEndeavor 5y agoI will say I find the inconsistency in whether a game will obey the physical Silent switch on iOS to be annoying at times. I'll know I have my volume turned up but oh, this game is being silent because Silent is on. At the very least that should be an option. While I'm on the Silent gripe, mild tangent, but Facebook on Android refusing to follow the Notifications volume and instead following the Ringtone volume is one of the shittiest pieces of UX I have to deal with daily.
- aidenn0 5y agoworst real-life one I saw was shaped like a knob. You had to move the mouse in a circle to move the volume up and down. I don't recall what software now, I think it was some random MP3 player crapware that came preinstalled on a computer.
- keithnz 5y agoyeah, this is the worse, even worse is if your mouse moves outside the circle of the knob it resets back to where ever it was, which I experienced on some random audio thing back in the 90s.
- bllguo 5y agospeaking of volume.. every device I've ever used is obscenely loud. On my phone (with headphones) even just 1 increment on the volume is too much at times; on my windows PC I basically never go above 10/100. How are these things calibrated exactly
- parsecs 5y agoIt might be due to your headphones, if they're particularly low resistance.
- bllguo 5y agothat's interesting, so it's related to the device. seems obvious in retrospect. still, I swap between 3 daily (bulky headphones, earphones, and wireless earbuds) and have the same complaint for all of them. just a coincidence?
- parsecs 5y agoProbably not? When I use my headphones with my laptop, 10% system volume and 100% app volume is about comparable to 80% volume (ish) on my iPhone 6S. Evidently there isn't much standardization between devices. Personally I don't find it that annoying - devices remember what volume I last set them to.
- moring 5y agoIf they are analog headphones, why can't the audio output measure the resistance and adjust the output signal accordingly?
- CamperBob2 5y agoKind of an interesting question. Initially, I'd say, "That won't work because resistance doesn't tell you anything about the efficiency of the speaker elements in the headphones." But how about complex impedance? The phone could measure that instead. A perfectly inefficient speaker -- one where you're holding the diaphragm in place with your fingers, maybe, or where you've removed the magnet with a hammer -- will have a reactive component. It'll look like an inductive load if it's an old-school speaker with a voice coil, or a capacitive load if it uses a piezo transducer. In either case, a perfectly efficient element that radiates all of the incoming energy would look more like a pure resistance, much like a properly-matched antenna at RF. So there might be some room to implement your suggestion, given a bit of R&D effort.
- AceJohnny2 5y agoObligatory Google Wave scrollbar mention... http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scrollbars/ http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/11/15/google_waves_scroll... (Damn, it's already been over a decade already since it ended?)
- addicted 5y agoThese aren’t good scrollbars, but it’s clear that they were trying to solve certain problems. And considering Waves were designed to potentially be extremely long, I can understand what they were trying to achieve. I am ok with design that fails while trying to solve real problems, as opposed to what we have today, where designs fail because they’re trying to either look better or match the current UI fad.
- donio 5y agoThe one with the 100 radio buttons at least allows precise control, something that most volume controls out there lack.
- 13of40 5y agoI just ran into one of these. I just got a Garmin Fenix Pro 6 watch, and it has a Spotify client on it. Just create a playlist on your phone or computer, then download and play it from your watch with Bluetooth. Sweet! Unfortunately it autoplays, seems to set the volume way too high by default, and while the volume control is a regular slider, it takes a minimum of four button presses across three different buttons around the perimeter of the watch to reduce it. So think "Crap that's loud-press up, press down, press enter, press down..." and all the while your eardrums are being blasted out. And god help you if you deviate from the sequence and have to back out to try again.
- glenngillen 5y agoI have the Fenix 5 so by no means the same, but it also seems like a weird "feature" to change between versions. Are you sure this isn't your headphones? I reconnect at the same volume I left it at when I join. Agreed the UX on the watch itself to adjust is a pain, thankfully the headphones I have are adjustable to it's quicker to do it there when I need to.
- kadoban 5y agoDo your headphones have volume control? If you're not sure, you should check. It's likely much less painful than that sounds.
- 13of40 5y agoNo, I have simple ones by design. I don't need my earbuds launching me into a cardio workout or a meditative breathing session if I touch them in the wrong spot. (Looking at you, Samsung.)
- kadoban 5y agoHah, fair enough. Ya I find volume adjust useful but everything else I can do without.
- itslennysfault 5y agoRunner up is the touch bar on MacBook Pro. I really miss the simple volume up/down buttons.
- snug 5y agoI think it works great, press and slide left or right (no need to lift your finger if that's what you're referring to)
- tedd4u 5y agoYes the touchbar slider is heinously bad. If my memory serves, you have to first tap one area to get a slider to appear and then slide that. <facepalm> I got the Air instead of the Pro basically for the hardware brightness / volume keys and lack of Touch Bar. It’s such a relief to use these keys without taking eyes off the screen and to not accidentally tap something on the Touch Bar that breaks flow. By the way, I think you can edit the Touch Bar to replace the volume slider with volume mute/down/up “buttons” instead of the slider which makes it a little better.
- Groxx 5y agoAs a hater of hidden UI like Apple has been obsessed with for several years (force touch, most of the touchbar, edge swiping (as convenient as it can be sometimes), etc): there is a way, but why would you ever try it: Touch-and-drag on the volume buttons to immediately drop into a volume slider, relative to where your finger started. It's a pretty nice interaction, honestly - better in most ways than the buttons alone I think, in part because you can be both more precise and make large changes faster. It's one of the VERY few places where I think the touchbar does something positive[1]. But the vast majority of people who would like to use it have no idea it exists. [1]: ... except when the touchbar freezes while doing this, and continually sets "max volume! MAX VOLUME! MAAAX VOOOLLLUUUUUUUMMEEE!!!!" several times per second until you do a hard shutdown to stop it from blaring [whatever you were listening to] at you because it's also stealing focus from whatever's on screen so you can't even click the "yes please shut down" button. Then I'm somewhat less fond of it.
- 5y ago
- banana_giraffe 5y agoMy personal favorite is the Mac OS volume widget on the volume status icon drop down. It somehow changes for two finger drag on the touchpad, but ignores the scroll wheel. Well done Apple.
- mjcohen 5y agoI had never tried that (Yosemite). The scroll wheel works just fine. On my 2014 Mac Mini, the Apple remote works fine for pausing, adjusting volume, and going into sleep mode with a long pause press.
- lightbulbjim 5y agoIt used to move with the scroll wheel. Starting with Big Sur it no longer does. No idea who thought that was a good idea.
- ardit33 5y agoVW seems to have topped all of these suggestions. Their volume control in the latest car (ID 4, and latest Golf) is dumb as hell, and sheer dangerous. Can't believe mature people in that company thought sliding your finger through to change the volume or temperature, when in a moving car, was a good idea. (even their steering wheel controls are touch sensitive). The Germans are way behind in basic software/ui/ux design, to the point that having normal knob controls is considered a huge feature.
- G3rn0ti 5y agoHave you ever tried buying a train ticket at one of the vending machines of the „Deutsche Bahn“ while in a hurry to catch your train? https://youtu.be/TIz6rwIsVHo https://youtu.be/TIz6rwIsVHo
- efrecon 5y agoThey ... abandoned knobs. I have a car from their previous generation and the whole UI can be controlled with knobs and button presses, in addition to touching the screen.
- dang 5y agoOne past related thread: The worst volume control user interfaces (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19407334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19407334 - March 2019 (19 comments)
- jmspring 5y agoYou mean modern iPhones?
- titzer 5y agoThe volume controls in Tuxguitar are legitimately worse than some posted here. To adjust the volume of a track, you choose "View > Show Instruments" and then the unlabeled first circle in each row is the volume "knob". It's a "knob" because it is basically a circle with a dot with the 6-o'clock position indicating 0 and the 3 o'clock position indicating maximum. To adjust it, you click and hold (with no visual feedback that you have clicked anything active) and then drag up and down. Not side-to-side or in a circle, up and down. I'm sorry to whoever designed this control for this very useful Free OSS. But goddamn that is bad.
- lights0123 5y agoCircular knobs in audio contexts that don't support circular mouse movement need to not exist. If you want to have the user drag their mouse up and down, just use a vertical slider.
- throwdbaaway 5y agoBack in the kde 3 days, there was this applet called "knob" for volume control. For me personally, its circular knob UI is actually the best. Firstly, you can place the applet at a corner of the panel, e.g. at the bottom right, such that you now have an infinitely large target [1] to hit. Then, once you have the mouse pointer hovering above it, you can: - scroll up/down to increase/decrease the volume - middle click to toggle on/off the sound For those who possess precise control of the mouse pointer, of course they can still click on an arbitrary spot on the knob to set the volume. For bonus point, because it is a knob, you always know what is the current volume level. All that for maybe 40x40 pixels of screen real estate only. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/fitts-law-and-infinite-width/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/fitts-law-and-infinite-width/
- liketochill 5y agoAnd for those of us on laptops with no mousewheel abs no middle button? Trying to make the mouse move in an arc … Knobs are great in the physical world, never met one on a screen that wasn’t hard to use.
- gwbas1c 5y agoIn the mid 1990s, Aerosmith released their Cloud 9 CD with enhanced content for windows when placed in a CDROM drive. The application always turned the volume up, all the way to max, whenever it started. This immediately resulted in me emailing the developers complaining. Surprisingly, they replied! (Although I don't remember what the reply was.)
- wil421 5y agoOh man I haven’t thought about those CDs that had extra content for computers. I had the volume issue and hated with a passion the weird players it would install.
- cm2187 5y agoThe volume control in VLC deserves a place somewhere in this list. It works fine if you click on it. But if you use the keyboard's up/down arrow keys, it seems to severely rate limit how fast you can increase or decrease sound. Not great when you need to stop a big bang from waking up your neighbors.
- bombela 5y agoIt also can go above 100%. And it seems that I can never get it back to 100% if I move it by mistake. Even using the keyboard it will never comes back to exactly 100%. Maybe 103%, or 98%. It drives me crazy.
- sellyme 5y ago> And it seems that I can never get it back to 100% if I move it by mistake. Move it to 0%/200% by whatever means you'd like, then use keyboard increments to return it to 100%.
- MaxikCZ 5y agoI dont know why, but sometimes I have this exact issue of mousewheel able to increase it by a step only every second or so, and sometimes it works perfectly. I remember googling how to solve the issue, and I remember solving it back then, but I dont remember what it was. And it still happens sometimes, I have a feeling its related to some specific files being played. It is ridiculous nonetheless
- gwbas1c 5y ago> An uncontrollable desire of redesigning something that hasn’t been redesigned for too long. It has to be recreated. And it has to be innovative. Right? > No one needs to Tesla's new steering wheel comes to mind. I love my Model 3, but I'm never buying another Tesla if I have to deal with a weirdo steering wheel.
- aiisahik 5y agoI would like to nominate the macbook pro touchbar I use it every single day and hate it every single day.
- tenaciousDaniel 5y agoI've used it multiple times a day for over a year, and I still need to consciously think about what I'm pressing when I use it. Ridiculous.
- einr 5y agoOh, the number of times I've absentmindedly adjusted the screen brightness when I meant to adjust volume or vice versa...
- abram 5y agoI find Apple's suggestion to use Siri to control the volume on the AirPods Pro [0] to be worse than some of the ideas on that page. The idea of having a spoken conversation in public in which I must request a volume change via a branded AI (and then repeat that request multiple times if necessary to reach my desired volume) just feels humiliating. [0] "To change the volume, say 'Hey, Siri,' then say something like 'Turn down the volume.'" -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212203 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212203
- chrisseaton 5y agoDoes seem odd they couldn't have squeezed another switch in there, or let you lower volume with the switch in one ear and raise it with the switch in the other ear.
- gumby 5y agoCrying out for a slider interface like the unlamented Touch Bar. The stems are long enough for the gesture (not absolute positioning).
- vxNsr 5y agoYea, I actually thought that’s how they worked when I first got them, I remember seeing a demo where that was done, but it was probably either concept art or a different product.
- cunthorpe 5y agoTime to bring back the click wheel via earring or nipple accessory.
- gumby 5y agoBrilliant. Address the problem by selling a dongle!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- topspin 5y agoI've seen worse volume controls than everything offered here on several radio streaming sites.
- triggercut 5y agoIs this podcast TOO LOUD? Or are your arms tired from holding your headphones a couple of inches from your ears at all times? Or would you just like to be able to mute ads like these that override your volume settings in your podcast app? Well, you can fix that, with a $2.97 monthly plan to volumeslider.com Listeners to this podcast use the promo code "STFU" for 22% off an annual subscription.
- datavirtue 5y agoThe resistor control is pure gold.
- quickthrower2 5y agoAnd pure black, brown, red, orange, ...
- ajklsdhfniuwehf 5y agoThose are still all better than mobile phones that have a dozen "volumes" and when you press the volume up when a video is just starting you might get lucky and lower the media volume, or you might have missed it for one microsecond and now you are stuck on ring or alarm or whatever volume while the video plays.
- devinplatt 5y agoWhich pairs great with autoplay videos in text based news articles you made the unfortunate choice to read on your phone in a quiet public place.
- howenterprisey 5y agoThose never have enough increments for me. I'm always on the quietest end of the slider, and when I want to go quieter I always end up accidentally muting the sound. I have to resort to dragging the slider with my finger - I don't know what I would do without that ability.
- tgb 5y agoOn Android I installed an app that lets me scale the global volume for this. It's called "Precise Volume" and seems to work well. I wish I could tweak the "gamma" of the volume slider though: I want to make quiet side quieter without making the loud end quieter so that it works both with headphones and with other devices.
- mdre 5y agoThat's a compressor/limiter. A simple feature that for some reason no one seems to ever implement in any consumer app/player/device. There may be some android apps for that on XDA and for rooted phones only.
- jimmySixDOF 5y agoadd to that a Bluetooth complication where vendor X earphone volume increments don't match the mobile platform. On Android you need to enable a Developer Mode setting (Disable Absolute Volume) before you get back control. I don't think that scores well on UI design either!
- rendall 5y agoTo read any of the other articles, you have to sign in and give up your data, open yourself up to spam. It's honestly terrible UX
- Ice_cream_suit 5y agoI nominate PulseAudio Volume Control 4.0 for the worst volume control that I have come across. Unfortunately I have to use it almost daily.
- wly_cdgr 5y agoSome good chuckles but shoulda cut the Insights And Takeaways section
- schemescape 5y agoLet's also not forget horrible microphone volume controls, e.g. where you crank it all the way up to "100%" and people can still barely hear you unless you yell directly into the little microphone hole.
- MaxikCZ 5y agoI have the same issue with mine. I stopped used that specific mic and have used WOMic android app ever since, turning my phone into wifi microphone. The phone microphone is suprisingly good quality and picks voice nicely even from distance. Paired with nVidia Broadcast to denoise the sound it became my daily driver.
- alex_young 5y agoOne of my ‘favorites’ is Tesla’s model 3 volume control. One simple physical roller, what could go wrong? Well, if you’re trying to turn down some music to hear a navigation prompt, it actually turns down the navigation volume instead. One can actually turn the navigation volume completely off without realizing it, and now not only is your music still loud, you’ll probably miss your next turn as well.
- LeoPanthera 5y agoAll/most CarPlay enabled cars do exactly the same thing. The navigation and music volume controls are treated separately but there's usually only one physical control.
- disillusioned 5y agoThis sort of context-aware volume control is fairly common though, right? If you adjust the volume while you're on a call, it's adjusting the phone volume. If you adjust the volume with the door open, you're adjusting the door-open volume, but it'll persist to when the door is shut (so, regular media volume) for the duration, which isn't the worst case. That being said, I get what you mean and why this would be frustrating. I've also had a call end and been absolutely ROCKED by how loud the underlying music had been because I forgot I had it set that high and the call obviously wasn't that loud.
- function_seven 5y agoAs always, there's an XKCD[6] for that. Albeit for the phone, but same idea. Would be nice if the side buttons controlled ringer volume only when the phone is either locked or on the home screen. If I'm in an app of any sort, chances are the volume I want to adjust is the media, not the ringer! [6] https://xkcd.com/1884/ https://xkcd.com/1884/
- bouke 5y agoOn iOS I’ve configured the buttons to always change media sound, not the ringer because of this.
- disillusioned 5y agoThis line: >I’m sure a lot of people reading this has, at some point in their careers, felt that urge of innovating no matter what. An uncontrollable desire of redesigning something that hasn’t been redesigned for too long. It has to be recreated. And it has to be innovative. Right? Made me think of the new Model S and its big dumb yoke. Elon literally reinvented the wheel, and for what? Poor ergonomics to fight 100 years of collective muscle memory and best practice, at a cost of reduced practicality with basic operations like parking, and safety when you move the blinkers and horn to capacitive buttons, and then have the ability to TURN the yoke upside down so that that their positions are inverted and your arms are crossed when you inevitably crash. It's complete lunacy and for no practical benefit. ("13-year-old-me would feel like I'm driving K.I.T.T." is not a practical benefit.)
- martin-adams 5y agoThe worst one I’ve experienced is quite simply the Mac. For some reason, the Siri volume is handled differently. If I accidentally press the Siri button, it does the Siri beep at a hazardous 100%! Clearly an engineering oversight, but any volume control that could cause hearing loss has to be the worst.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoThe worst that actually existed as a shipping product was probably the QuickTime player that had a skeuomorphic thumb-wheel: http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
- kergonath 5y agoWhat an abomination this UI was… 14 years-old me thought that brushed metal was quite cool, though.
- lanewinfield 5y agoI once was tasked with creating a version of this as an interview assignment for a job at Apple. Definitely one of the more fun interview tasks I've had.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoWhat is the problem with the iOS one?
- starchild_3001 5y agoI think the worst volume control is on Mac OS Big Sur... the missing Volume Icon In Menu Bar. A second close is the volume controls on the MacBook Pro touch bar. Fairly subpar (push-and-hold).
- Hamuko 5y agoYou do know you can just drag the volume icon from the control center back to the menu bar, right? And the Touch Bar volume controls are probably the nicest UX on a Touch Bar, since it allows to change the volume quite fast with a simple drag & slide.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoHow is anyone supposed to work out that you can drag a volume icon from the control center to the menu bar? It's nice that you can. But as clear affordances go, that really isn't one.
- Hamuko 5y agoYou can also go to System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar > Sound > Show in Menu Bar.
- knolan 5y agoI don’t mind the Touch Bar volume control, you just don’t lift your finger and drag the icon. Same for screen brightness. My only gripe is that my 16” MBP gets so hot using the touch bar burns my finger.
- quickthrower2 5y agoThe worst "volume experience" IMO is many (albeit cheap) laptops, with speakers that at maximum volume cannot produce sounds audible over the laptops own fan, or that can overcome someone whispering from a few meters away.
- ajuc 5y agoThere is still innovation required. For example I'd like mouse wheeling on the volume indicator in tray to change the volume on windows like it does in KDE on Linux.
- rebuilder 5y agoA modest proposal: When the volume slider reaches its end, it should roll over to the other end for convenience. Thus, we can do away with one of the volume buttons, and just have a single button that decreases the volume until the slider rolls over.
- aitchnyu 5y agoTVS Jive motorcycle had "Rotary Gears - Shift from 4th gear to neutral directly".
- bullen 5y agoThey are nowhere close, the worst exists on modern TVs, the AI volume controller = you cannot change the volume but the TV automatically senses the noise level and adjusts the volume to what it thinks you want.
- polytely 5y agoAt my school (where I studied design) there were these big screens that we used for presentations (I think it was LG?) that had an absolutely terrible gesture control below the lower bezel, the idea being that you would move your hand through the air below the tv to scroll through menu's, it didn't work at all, and the TV was almost impossible to control.
- kristopolous 5y agoI'm on the other end. I use a cheap midi device to do volume control via knobs and a slider. I've been trying to explore other modalities: https://youtu.be/rdlAZfH9Uhk https://youtu.be/rdlAZfH9Uhk I've been working with this idea for a while. Here's a year ago https://youtu.be/0Ot0j4R36b8 https://youtu.be/0Ot0j4R36b8 Sorry for the ramble below I'm kinda obsessed about this: The basic theory is the current bottleneck for computing is input devices not being versatile and expressive enough. The computer is waiting for us these days. How can someone do interface "chunking" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)) if they have something other than buttons at their disposal. Are their new UI paradigms to exploit? The interfacing is thru python and is part of a larger music exploration project I've got terribly documented. That's kinda the "first application" just like office productivity was the first application of WIMP. It makes the goal of intuitively navigating multidimensional problems through geospatial and tactile interfacing less abstract. The actual script is here https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/blob/master/tools/midiread.py https://github.com/kristopolous/music-explorer/blob/master/t... I was exploring everything from browser tab controls to instrumenting software debuggers to window management with this thing so it's kinda a mess. There's a lot of code scattered in my various projects on this topic The biggest UI fumble is the value repetition and tactility is great until the context of the control changes and then you get a discontinuous jump. The "obvious" workaround of using relative values has the random walk problem. You need a disengagement mode to reset it from wandering off to one of the edges. That's a flow disrupting cognitive shift (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_shifting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_shifting) I tried using 2 cheap arduino joy controllers (example https://satkit.com/image/cache/catalog/products/arduino-joystick-arduino-5879-700x700.jpg https://satkit.com/image/cache/catalog/products/arduino-joys...) and allocate one joy for mode and the other one for value (inspired from orbitouch https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImage/A446_131237220226884423olSj0ndG7d.jpg https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImage/A446_13123722022688...) it works fine with logarithmic relative values. (Going to value 0 and max are common) Also both these models are about giving the thumbs more jobs then just a single key, an idea I stole from Maltron (http://www.micwil.com/images/gallery/maltron_keyboards_dual_handed_maltron_l90_ergonomic_3d_keyboard_p2_1200x850.jpg http://www.micwil.com/images/gallery/maltron_keyboards_dual_...). Sliding a control right next to a conventional keyboard base should be doable on the cheap and help get towards the goal. The joys were a better solution for this but then I'd have to "sell" something which I'm trying to avoid. My earlier method involved a USB foot pedal which acted as a quasimode for control (example: https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/usb-foot-switch.jpg https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/usb... ... it can be assigned to something like "Hyper" in Xorg parlance, see here https://github.com/kristopolous/tools/blob/master/bin/footpad https://github.com/kristopolous/tools/blob/master/bin/footpa...) and then my lua scriptable window manager captured the key strokes and delegated things accordingly (example: https://github.com/kristopolous/crappy-notion/blob/master/mod_mpv.lua https://github.com/kristopolous/crappy-notion/blob/master/mo...). It's still just "buttons" at the end though and this whole project is about integrating sliders knobs and joys to general computing. I just hope to get everything done satisfactorily with the midi, I don't have to manufacture anything and it's a far easier technical investment for casual people and the device in the video is only $40. I don't want to "own" anything here. I want people to liberally iterate and innovate as much as possible. I'm certainly not the smartest person in the room.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoDear Microsoft: When I change the volume in Windows whilst something is playing audio, please DON'T issue an annoying 'bong!' sound.
- andyxor 5y agoSonos volume control on their speakers is a contender, their entire app can be used as an illustration of bad UX
- justshowpost 5y ago> in the world I disapprove that. While jokes there indeed packs some hilarity and/or creativity, the title implies its real world UI misdesign, not just stuff made for giggles. Seriously, we have tons of terrible UI solutions actually deployed and used. It might be much less funny to find them and make a gallery, tho.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DonHopkins 5y agoCareful, they'll give the VLC developers ideas!
- tzs 5y agoOh my. I actually used something kind of like the third one (array of buttons for each volume level). I wanted something more convenient than the Denon app for changing inputs and volume on my Denon A/V receiver, poked around a bit and found that the receiver has an HTTP API that the app uses, and decided to make a simple web page that could use that API. I could then add that to favorites in Safari and then control the receiver from the browser. Here it is: https://imgur.com/a/ExkhOgO https://imgur.com/a/ExkhOgO
- bborud 5y agoApple's volume control is pretty bad in macOS is pretty bad now. I didn't think they could mess up that corner of the UI, but they did.
- cunthorpe 5y agoIndeed. Funny to see this article pop up now because I've been considering the purchase of a USB volume knob for this exact reason. The Touch Bar volume control is almost right except it's too damn slow. Dragging the volume button works, but the control doesn't start for another 500ms. Try touching it and immediately swiping all the way left, the finger will leave the bar before the control opens. Sigh.
- scott-smith_us 5y agoI used to work with a "GUI Expert" who designed everything like the 100-radio-button example, except that he didn't line anything up. I'd look at something he'd done with controls snaking left and right as you scanned down the dialog, and I'd (sigh to myself internally, and) say "OK, go ahead and clean it up and check it in", and he'd look confused and ask "clean what up?" He was actually UI blind in the same way some people are face blind...
- lucideer 5y agoTbh, I saw that example in the post and thought "that's ugly but extremely usable; I don't think that belongs here". Sure, it would be a little easier to use with some extra UI tweaks - e.g. aligned correctly (10x10 instead of 11x10), digits padded & maybe larger click areas - but the general idea of being able to click once and get the desired volume is pretty powerful: you can technically do that on a scale, but accuracy is tricky and the annotation isn't as detailed. I'm not saying it's better than a scale (a certain compromise on granularity provides the optimum solution), but it's hardly a candidate for "worst".
- teknopaul 5y agoApple's volume control is laughable. That stupid blipping noise for "feedback" as if you couldn't hear the sounds that is already playing. Naturally the bip is at a squarker bursting volume because all the hip kids listem to music compressed into oblivion and a bit of spare dynamic range is not something any Apple customer will ever understand. I am sure many fanbois bemoan the fact that their hi-fi does not have the exact same apple blessed bip, it will not be long before DJs pump up the volume with accompanying bips.
- dtgriscom 5y agoThat "blip" is to give you feedback when sound isn't actually playing. And, you can turn it off if you want to (System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects > Play feedback when volume is changed). I leave mine turned off; holding down Shift temporarily re-enables it.
- qlm 5y agoI haven't heard that blip in years. Is it still around? Edit: I see you can enable it, does it default to off on the touchbar Macbooks?
- amelius 5y agoJust give me a nice round retro potentionmeter-style knob on my keyboard.
- fleddr 5y agoIt's a long time ago, but I remember a real world volume control even worse than these playful examples. My friend had a Hifi set where turning the volume knob would digitally update the dB value on the display. This in itself is a bad idea, as most people don't understand decibels and how it's a non-linear scale. But it gets worse. The dB value did not indicate current output, it indicated "remaining" dB that the set could output. So if the value is 0, it means volume is at full output. Of course, you'd normally notice that when music is playing, but you can have the scare of your life when thinking its down and then switching input sources. Or turning of music, dialing down, and then turning it on again.
- kortex 5y agoThat's pretty common on HiFi. It's not indicating "remaining" per se, the dB value is reduction from line level - -20dB is a 100-fold reduction in output power. I actually find it pretty convenient since the dynamic range is actually useful (unlike most phones which have a step-change from 0 to 1). I'm sure it's somewhat deliberate, "only plebs lack understanding of dBs and log scaling. I'm a refined audiophile! "
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI've read like 3 explanations of why dB ratings are the way they are over the years and I still don't get it. Personally I think this is one instance where having a 0-100 linear scale is good UX for volume.
- spacechild1 5y ago> So if the value is 0, it means volume is at full output. That's called "dBFS" (= decibel full scale) and pretty standard in the professional digital audio. For example, that's how every VU meter in a DAW works. But I would agree that it is not best idea for a consumer device :-)
- baalimago 5y agoThis is the new volume control in windows 11 (some insider version they've randomly thrown at me): https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/786/aIfxKh.png https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/786/aIfxKh.png It's atrocious. No slider, clicking on it "blips" the speakers so you can hear how loud it is. You have to hover pointer on top of it which enlarges the green circle by about 10% to show "Hey, you're hovering me, in case you missed it!" and then scroll so the the tiny tiny dot gets slightly more enlarged (which clearly indicates new volume, duh). Then it shrinks to a smaller size back when stopping the hover. Oh, the arrow to the right? Does that open the customary volume slider? No that's the sound device picker. Speaker to the left is the mute. To make matters worse it's in the same "group" as the network symbol is (although there's no network settings when clicking), and sometimes clicking the thing doesn't work at all, depends on how much explorer.exe decides to hang at the moment. But surely I just got some broken alpha/beta version.
- wutwutwutwut 5y agoSo you have signed up for insider builds? Then claiming that they have "randomly thrown" it at you is just odd. You explicitly told them you wanted early builds.
- hnbad 5y agoNot OP but I'm in the same boat. I signed up for insider (dev) builds to get X support in WSL2, then set it to switch me back to insider (beta) builds on the next opportunity. But they didn't do another beta or any other insider built really before rolling out Win11 to dev so that's what I got on the next update. There also wasn't any notice this would happen despite my machine apparently not meeting the requirements for Windows 11. I'm not complaining but it was definitely unexpected for me despite being in the insiders program. Especially given that Windows 11 is being promoted as the "next version of Windows", not just another Windows 10 release. FWIW my volume slider is still a slider. I have no idea what's going on in that screenshot but either they're A/B testing, this is a weird language-specific UI variant or there's a bug.
- hughrr 5y agoFuck me that’s just stupid.
- cushychicken 5y agoOMG I lost it at the resistor color band selection version XD
- nojs 5y agoThese are all jokes except the iPhone randomly included which is real. Am I missing something?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- activitypea 5y agoCan someone explain the iPhone one? I've never had an iPhone, it looks just like a simple slider, I don't see the problem. Is the gif not playing for me?
- mmmmmbop 5y agoI believe it's an attempt at a joke.
- bobbylarrybobby 5y agoWell, one issue (not shown) is that if your control center has so many items that it scrolls vertically, then there's ambiguity whether you're trying to scroll control center or drag the volume slider. This could have been fixed by making the volume slider horizontal.
- kaba0 5y agoCan you even place as many elements there? Vertical scrolling would not really make sense since you get into/out of that “menu” with a vertical swipe.
- snarfy 5y agoThere is a pic with Clippy - "It looks like the music is loud. Would you like me to turn it down?" If that is bad UI someone please tell the Android developers. Getting real tired of the volume control warning me it's too loud and might damage my ears. It's plugged into a a damn aux jack.
- sjcsjc 5y agoThe best bit is that the yes button is disabled.
- iso1631 5y agoSpotify volume is bad. I use a traditional mouse with a traditional scroll where where scrolling down moves the scroll bar down which moves the viewpoint down. On say youtube, scrolling down on the volume control reduces the volume. On spotify (well the webplayer anyway), scrolling down increases the volume.
- 404mm 5y agoBoo, my contribution didn’t make it to the gallery. I created a volume control panel that combines the sound Volume with C:\ Volume and links them together. If you wanted the sound louder, you had to fill up your C: more to raise the disk use percentage. I was proud of it.
- m3kw9 5y agoA (skeuomorphic) circular knob that needed your mouse to drag and rotate around is one.
- Folkert 5y agoHow about making it a Firefox configuration setting?
- standardUser 5y agoThe worst volume control is no volume control. I'm looking at you Zoom.
- KONAir 5y agoTo be honest I would use tickbox or text input ones. Also I am fairly certain without constant earbud volume level warnings I'd be deaf in a week.
- twic 5y agoI think the worst volume UI is the one on the Ubuntu machine i'm using right now. It's exactly like the volume UI on every other Linux desktop you've used, except that it doesn't actually change the volume. You spin the wheel on the keyboard, and the overlay appears on screen to let you know the volume has changed. Or you pop open the menu and adjust it there. Everything looks good. But the volume doesn't change. Because sometimes, the sound is coming out of the speakers, but the volume control is somehow attached to the monitor port on my microphone. So when you're adjusting the volume, you're adjusting the volume of that. This is a corporate build of Ubuntu 18, so it's pretty ancient. If i boot into current Fedora - same hardware, same desktop environment - it works fine.
- ammar_x 5y agoFunny and creative :)
- xputer 5y agoWhat about the Fire tablets that flip the volume control hardware button whenever you change screen orientation from portrait to landscape and vice versa? I always mess up because of that.