Android 15’s ‘Adaptive Vibrations’ Change Based on Your Environment

For phone notifications, somewhere between beeps and silence there are vibrations: A way of getting incoming alerts that you'll notice, but which no one around you will (at least in theory—if your phone is sitting on a glass table, everyone will definitely hear it). While there are no stats on how many people always have their phone notifications set to vibrate only, I'm guessing it's a pretty high percentage.

With the launch of Android 15, vibrations are getting smarter—the Google operating system update includes a setting called "adaptive vibration" that adjusts the intensity of your phone's alert based on ambient conditions. So if you're in a loud place, the vibration might be stronger; if your phone's in your pocket, it might be gentler.

You may have experienced times when you've been in a very quiet spot and your vibrating phone has made almost as much noise as a ringtone would. Or maybe you've been in a very noisy environment and haven't noticed your phone buzzing at all. These are the sorts of problems adaptive vibration is trying to solve.

How to turn on adaptive vibration on a Pixel phone

You can find adaptive vibration in Android 15 on a Pixel phone by heading to Settings, then selecting Sound and vibration, Vibration and haptics, and then Adaptive vibration. As per Google, you need a Pixel 7 (launched in 2022) or later phone, otherwise you won't see the menu option.

The next screen explains how adaptive vibration works: Essentially, the sensors on your handset and the microphone are used to try and determine what's happening around you. None of this information is stored or sent to Google. Turn on the Adaptive vibration toggle switch and you're done.

Based on the time I've had the feature enabled, it works pretty well: It's not flawless every time, but most of the time it hits the right sort of balance with the strength of the buzz. Helpfully, there's a big variation between the most and least intense vibrations, which means they can be tailored for a wide variety of scenarios.

We'll have to wait and see how Samsung and other phone makers implement the Android 15 feature on their own devices, once the software update rolls out. At the moment, there's no equivalent customization option in One UI 6 (based on Android 14).

How to access other vibration settings on Android

There are other vibration options in Android, though not as many as I would like. If you head to Settings and select Sound and vibration and then Vibration and haptics, you'll se sliders to adjust the vibration strength for calls, notifications, and alarms (you can set the slider to zero to disable vibrations for a particular type of alert).

What you can't do is set different vibration strengths or patterns for individual apps—app developers can do this, but you get whatever type of vibration they've picked. It is possible to turn vibrations on and off for specific apps, but that's the only level of customization on offer. To do this, open Settings, tap Apps, then choose an app, then tap Notifications to turn vibrations on or off.

Other ways to adjust vibrations on Android

Plugging this functionality gap, at least to some extent, is an app called Buzzkill, which will set you back $3.99 from the Play Store. It's a comprehensive notification manager that lets you set all kinds of custom rules for alerts—and those rules can include different vibrations for different apps, and even for different types of messages (messages mentioning a specific word, for example).

If you're using Android on a Samsung, you can change the vibration pattern, but it's a global setting that applies everywhere—you can't set different patterns for different apps. From Settings, choose Sounds and vibration, then Vibration pattern. Select any option on the list to get a preview of how the vibration will sound on your phone.