I thought I loved the slider for volume/brightness, and was concerned about losing them, but then realized how little I cared when I went back to no slider
Did you notice you can hold and slide to change volume? You don’t need to hit the volume slider where it appears. Same with brightness.
Totally undiscoverable gesture.
maybe i am misunderstanding you but to change the volume, or brightness sliders, you don't need to lift your finger to adjust the slider. Once you click the volume button you can slide your finger without ever picking it up. only realized it myself after a friends told me - it never seemed that obvious
You can just flick left/right on the volume/brightness icons to adjust a single increment, without having to bring out the slider. This isn't documented anywhere, it's another one of those hidden features you just have to learn.
Yes you can have buttons to change volume and brightness. In fact the icons next to the slider are buttons you can tap to lower/increase volume/brightness. Or you can configure them to always show up as buttons without slider.
I don't understand why anyone would prefer a volume slider to discrete up/down buttons. I almost never want to quickly slide to a specific volume, it's always "this is a little too loud" or "I didn't quite hear that."
The action I want is a quick relative tick up or down, then listen again to see if the improvement is adequate, then repeat as necessary until it's perfect.
Sliders are good for quickly moving by a large amount to a rough absolute position. But they're utter crap for fine adjustment.
Am I the only one who gets infuriated when trying to get to the exact spot I want by rolling my finger ever so slightly to get a slider to move by half a pixel? It takes forever and it gives you RSI!
I’m sure I have had sliders mishave like that, too. Mostly I just don’t want a slider in the first place; I prefer feeling for the volume up/down keys and tweaking the volume bit by bit, sometimes using modifier keys for extra precision. It is incredibly easy to input “slightly louder” in the old way. It is unnecessarily hard to input “slightly louder” with a wonky touch slider. And, at times I have blown up the speaker by touching it the wrong way.
I find the 'one slider per program' frequently useful. Different programs can be outputting at wildly different levels. I might have my music playing at a comfortable volume, then discover a video on YouTube I want to watch, and it comes in painfully loud, such that I'm immediately reaching for the volume control on the speakers or yanking off my headphones. Then when the video's over, I get to turn my speakers/headphones back up.
With only a single master volume control I'm often fiddling with it to keep things at a reasonable level. With per program volume, I'm fiddling with levels less often and spending more time just listening.
Those never have enough increments for me. I'm always on the quietest end of the slider, and when I want to go quieter I always end up accidentally muting the sound. I have to resort to dragging the slider with my finger - I don't know what I would do without that ability.
I also normally have 3-4 sound sources during normal home computer use, all at different volume levels so they self prioritize. I'm not sure what the gain would be for removing the sliders when they serve a perfectly valid function. What benefit do you see from removing volume sliders?
Hi thanks!
1.Not sure about a volume slider - always saw this as avoidable for simplicity and UX.
2. You absolutely right. Its a must. Was to complicated so far... we'll see
Don't forget, is it linear or logarithmic? It baffles me that it's 2017 and people who implement volume sliders never even consider that the obvious choice might not be the best...
yeah agreed, i have an in with some of the devs on this - the volume slider was a secondary feature and is on the list last time i heard, stay tuned (haha) for the next release,
> You may already know this but you can just tap and hold on one of the brightness or volume buttons and just slide the way you want and the button morphs into a slider.
This is a nice shortcut for adjusting the volume. However compared with non-TouchBar keyboards, adjusting the volume now requires you to look at the keyboard and precisely slide your finger around on the TouchBar. Whereas on the non-TouchBar you could rely on finger memory to instantly and without disruption from looking at the keyboard adjust the volume.
You click the sound icon, then the slide opens up, then you can either slide it or click one of the two icons.
It’s probably quicker to change the volume from one to ten this way, but 99% of my use cases for changing volume is for one or two steps, for which the slider absolutely sucks.
It’s some of the worst design I’ve ever seen for volume control, and the old system is some of the best.
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