Gemini’s blowing up volume levels on headphones

Having ubiquitous access to voice assistants is one of those modern conveniences that’s all too easy to take for granted, and with as many connected devices as there are in our lives, a lot of us are within earshot of an eager virtual assistant more often than not. While we’re usually just a quick wake word away from accessing them, that process doesn’t always work as smoothly as we’d hope. Right now, a bunch of Pixel users have been complaining about some issues with how their devices respond to “Hey Google,” but we’ve got some good news to share with them.

Over the weekend, a submission to Reddit’s Pixel sub detailed the underlying problem here: When wearing headphones, after delivering your “Hey Google” wake word, affected phones would momentarily crank the volume to ear-splitting levels. While it would almost instantly go back to normal, that is not at all the sort of experience you want when all that volume is being pumped directly into your ears.

Replies from multiple owners of Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 series hardware all confirm experiencing the same issue, which tends to crop up when they’re listening to music or other media. The effect doesn’t appear to be related to the new assistant volume controls in Android 17.

So, what’s the good news? Well, even though we don’t have a fix to share with you just now, Google’s on the case. The official Pixel Product Support Team account has reached out to the Redditors in that post who reported observing this effect on their devices, and hopefully that means the team’s gathering data to ultimately narrow down the cause and identify a possible fix.

Right now we can’t say with any confidence when you might be able to expect a resolution, so maybe consider slipping the headphones off next time you need to talk to Gemini.