You can prevent Android’s Do Not Disturb mode from triggering with the Volume buttons on the Pixel and Pixel XL by following these steps.
Android has a convenient way of toggling Do Not Disturb mode on and off from the Volume Up and Volume Down buttons. So for example, you can press the volume down button to lower the notification volume level to zero. Moving this volume level to zero will put the Pixel and Pixel XL into what is known as Silent mode.
You’ll still receive your notifications and all, but you won’t hear a notification sound and will only have the phone vibrate to alert you.
With your phone in Silent mode, pressing the Volume Down button again will enable Do Not Disturb mode. This will prevent you from being alerted to any notifications, and can actually cause your Android Wear smartwatch to no longer receive alerts too. This can be a convenience for some people, but a nuisance for others. Thankfully with Android 7.0 Nougat on the Pixel and Pixel XL, we can completely disable this volume button shortcut with Do Not Disturb mode.
It’s possible this will likely work on other devices running Android 7.0 Nougat, but some OEMs remove the common way to access System UI Tuner.
Pixel Do Not Disturb Volume Button
- Enable the System UI Tuner
- Launch the Settings application
- Scroll down and tap on the ‘System UI Tuner’ option
- Tap on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ option
- Then toggle the ‘Volume Buttons Shortcut’ option to off
Explanation
I used to really enjoy this volume button shortcut feature, but as I tend to adjust the volume levels on my smartphone a lot. Once I started using Android Wear though, I started to dislike it because it would prevent me from receiving any information about my notifications on my smartwatch. So I had to adjust my habits to make sure that I only put the phone into Silent mode and had to make sure I didn’t accidentally push it too far into Do Not Disturb mode.
Thankfully with Android 7.0 Nougat, I don’t have to worry about this anymore as I can simply toggle this feature off. To do this, you will need to enable the System UI Tuner hidden settings menu option. If you’re not sure how to do this, check the link in the step by step guide above and that will walk you through the process. Some OEMs have disabled this shortcut though, so be aware of that.
Once the System UI Tuner has been enabled, launch the Settings application (if it’s not open already) and then scroll all the way down to the bottom. You’ll want to tap on the System UI Tuner option that is now there, and this will take you into the hidden sub-menu. From here, the second option should be labeled Do Not Disturb, and tapping on it will show you two different toggles that Google has included to allow you to customize this special mode.
Yesterday I showed you the first feature, that enables you to add a Do Not Disturb mode shortcut to the Volume Controls. The second toggle is for the volume buttons shortcut and this one is toggled on by default. So all you have to do is tap the Volume Buttons Shortcut option that you see here, and it should toggle the feature off. Once it has been toggled off, go ahead and tap the Home button to go back to the Home Screen.
From here, you can test the change by pressing the Volume Down button multiple times to see if you can go from Silent mode to Do Not Disturb mode. As shown in the video above, this shouldn’t be possible with this feature toggled off.
