Google Assistant on Android smartphones is available officially on all Android Marshmallow devices on select languages in a handful of markets. The smart assistant can be accessed by voice or by text input, though spoken feedback is only given when queries are sent to Assistant through your voice.
Recommended Reading: Here's how to get Google Assistant on Android 5.0+ Tablets WITHOUT Root
Voice interactions with Google Assistant can come in handy when you aren't able to use your phone to make searches, such as when driving. In those cases, it can be especially frustrating to speak to Google Assistant only for its response to be mute because your device's media volume is too low. When you're on the road, you can't afford any distractions like glancing over to see the visual output of your Assistant query (if you can even see your screen depending on where you docked it) or fumble with your phone to increase the volume so you can repeat your command.
Many Redditors on the /r/GooglePixel subreddit wondered why Google Assistant can't just use its own separate volume level. Although Assistant can't just add its own volume stream to every device, it certainly should be able to set a custom media volume level before speaking to you. I guess Google didn't want users to face the opposite problem where Assistant blasts its response at full volume while you're in a quiet room at night.
In any case, if you want to be able to control the volume level of Google Assistant independently from your device's current media volume, I've made a crude, but completely free app with no advertisements that can do just that. I say crude because the application was built using Tasker with its Tasker App Factory extension.
This means the opportunities for beautiful design are limited (and it may look wonky on certain screen resolutions because Tasker doesn't support dynamically scaling its scenes), but honestly you're probably going to spend a maximum of 5 seconds looking at this app because all you really need to do is flip a switch and change a few sliders then be on your merry way.
Get the Google Assistant Volume Control App for Free on XDA Labs
All you have to do is install the app, enable its Accessibility Service, toggle the switch in the app to start its Google Assistant monitoring service, and change a few of the settings. The app will do the rest in the background. It works on any device that has Google Assistant support such as the Google Pixel, Google Pixel XL, OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, etc. No longer will you have to remember to manually set your media volume before talking to the Google Assistant, this app will take care of that.
Though if you really, really can't stand the design of this app or want more long-term support, you can purchase the Volume Control for Assistant app for $1.49 on the Google Play Store. The idea for this app that I made comes from this developer, though in no way am I copying their code. I made this app on my own as more of a proof of concept to myself because the concept seemed simple enough and I wanted to see what kinds of apps could be made with Tasker.
In a separate article, I will detail how I used Tasker to make this app as well as give tips so you can start making simple apps without touching a single line of code as well.
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