Tasker’s latest beta makes it possible to get the “hold down volume button to mute” gesture from iOS on Android 8.0+

Even though most of us feel at home and satisfied with Android, there are a few smaller tricks that iOS can do which Android cannot out-of-the-box. One of these iOS features is the ability to hold down the volume down button to mute the device. Stock Android can mute an incoming call when you press either volume buttons, but you can’t simply mute your device without needing to look at it, unless your phone has extra dedicated hardware like the Alert Slider on OnePlus devices.

Google added in the ability for apps to listen to volume key long presses in Android 8.0 Oreo, but did not work on implementing a user-facing solution to make use of this ability. Finally, after about two years, the Next Track app implemented the API to allow users to skip tracks on a volume key long press. The rediscovery of this forgotten API has prompted Tasker dev joaomgcd to incorporate the same within Tasker (beta), opening up a whole world of possibilities.

Tasker’s latest beta now allows you to remap the long press actions on volume buttons. Using this, you can very easily mimic the iOS “hold down volume to mute” gesture functionality. And since this is Tasker, this is just one of the things you can do. The volume buttons are easy to discern through physical touch, so you can very effectively use them to trigger tasks that you want to get done without too many actions or too much thought. The long press actions work even with the screen off, so you don’t even need to pull your phone out of your pocket.

Do note that you need to grant Tasker permission through an ADB command, as detailed over here, before configuring the event.

The full changelog for the update to Tasker Beta is as follows:

• Added Volume Long Press event which allows you to handle it even when the screen is off
• Added Notification Channel Info action which returns all info about a given notification channel for Tasker or the kid app that’s running
• Handle crash in some situations in actions that output variables
• Add permission to install packages in kid app if API is >= 26
• Don’t show browse icon for notification category in Notify Action in Api < Oreo
• Fixed Display Size action for Android 9 devices
• Fixed Javascriptlet action not running if there was a local variable with the text </script> in it
• Fixed scenes automatically resizing in some situations

You can join the Beta by following along this link.

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Source: Tasker Subreddit

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