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Bogdan Petrovan \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n
TL;DR<\/p>\n
Google may soon roll out a new \u201cHearing Wellness\u201d settings page to Pixel devices that lets you control whether the OS will notify you and\/or take proactive action on your prolonged exposure to loud audio.
\nThe feature builds upon an OS-level \u2018sound dose\u2019 feature that automatically lowers your headphones\u2019 volume to safer limits to prevent any hearing loss.
\nIn certain regions, the \u2018sound dose\u2019 feature is turned on by default and cannot be turned off even with the new settings page.<\/p>\n
Continued exposure to loud volumes is linked with potential permanent ear damage, and with the prevalence of in-ear wireless earbuds, concerns about hearing loss<\/a> have been rising. Google wants to prevent that from happening to you, so the company added a feature a while back that will periodically remind you to lower your earphones\u2019 volume. If you don\u2019t act, it will reduce the volume itself. Some people found these warnings a bit annoying, though, so Google is preparing to roll out a new page for toggling them.<\/p>\n While poking around in the Android System Intelligence app, our Authority Insights team discovered a hidden Hearing Wellness menu. This menu will be injected into the Settings app under the Sound & vibration submenu on all Pixel devices. This menu contains two toggles: Sound Exposure Notifications and Hearing Health.<\/p>\n Both of these features were originally introduced<\/a> in Android 14 QPR1 and subsequently became available to all Android devices in last year\u2019s Android 15<\/a> release, provided the OEM enabled them. However, the operating system never provided a user-facing way to toggle them, which this new Hearing Wellness menu provides.<\/p>\n When the two features are enabled, your Pixel will send you a notification when the output of your headphones exceeds a certain safe threshold. According to a Google support page<\/a>, this threshold is set to the sound pressure limit of 100 decibels over five minutes or 105dB per minute. When that happens, you will see an alert pop up on your Pixel phone, asking you to \u201cKeep listening\u201d or \u201cLower the volume.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t want to miss the best from Android Authority?<\/p>\n These alert notifications are turned on by default on Pixel devices and currently cannot be turned off regardless of region. Furthermore, if you simply dismiss the notification, the feature will automatically lower the volume.<\/p>\n That latter aspect \u2014 where the feature automatically lowers the volume \u2014 is required in some regions, hence why some users cannot toggle it even from this new page. Google implemented this feature in accordance with guidelines from the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The specific guidelines for healthy sound pressure levels were added in the third edition of IEC 62368-1 safety standards<\/a> published by the body, and adopted in regions including the US, Canada, and the EU.<\/p>\n Google says the latter setting is therefore locked in some regions as part of regulatory requirements<\/a>, as seen in the images above. Despite that, it is bound to annoy users who like to blast audio at full volume, and we\u2019ve already come across a few instances<\/a> of criticism<\/a> from users.<\/p>\n \u26a0\ufe0f An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.<\/p>\n This article was updated at 10:24 AM ET to correct that only the Hearing Wellness menu for controlling sound exposure notifications is new and not the sound exposure notifications itself.<\/p>\n![\"google](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/google-android-15-hearing-wellness-scaled.jpg\"\/ "\\"google")
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