Audio boost should be present for all clients including Android mobile, but it’s sadly missing and the devs haven’t promised it’s on the roadmap.
I am willing to wait but an old feature not even planned is very sad.
Hi @elan , Please bring this feature back to android mobile and Android TV on the image.
Some android mobiles like pixels don’t have Dolby Atmos support and we were using external player like VLC to boost Atmos video volume (Most downloaded content in 2025 is Atmos audio). Now with new experience player, there is no option. This is an innocuous feature and anyone who wants it can enable or disable it.
Please let me know if it is planned for the future?
Additionally, can you please have the android mobile player depend on in-screen player brightness controls and not global device brightness control for video?
The problem is when I set the brightness to 80% on the device brightness it is equivalent to settings 30% brightness in VLC or mpv because they depend on in-player brightness control. Please try it yourself on a pixel.
And when I exit the Plex player, it is still 80% brightness which is too bright for static elements and which I have to notch it down a bit to browse the phone. This is annoying every time. With VLC, you just exit it and comes back to phones brightness.
I just wanted these 2 issues to be heard and acknowledged. Thank you!
Hi @BigWheel , can you please acknowledge the brightness and audio boost issue?
I’m told that setting, which is for multi-channel audio boost when downsampling to stereo, should come back, but I do not have an ETA
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Thank you for getting back! I don’t need ETA, I am just happy if it’s planned. Audio boost is coming for Android mobile too right? Anything about the player brightness? It’s so dull until I set my device brightness to 100% but whereas with VLC just 30% screen brightness gets really bright.
By dull I mean when both players (vlc and Plex) are paused at a particular time the same amount of brightness % on both will produce a duller or dark or shadowed effect on the Plex player.
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Afaik yes
so they look then same when not paused?
When the On Screen controller is up there is a darker gradient over the video, do you mean that?
I’m not personally aware of any brightness issue but I will ask. Looks the same to me playing or paused.
Both paused and playing. Please use a pixel if possible. I don’t think iphones have this issue and I am not aware of what happens on other Android phones. I can be certain it happens on a pixel 8 pro, 7a, 6a.
Let me explain the issue again.
During both paused and playing state, the screen appears to be darker on Plex player compared to VLC when both are set to 50% brightness.
Steps to reproduce issue:
- Set your pixel phone to 50% brightness. This is can be done my holding down on the brightness slider 3 secs and the 50th percentile will be marked with a circle.
- Play video on Plex player which has brighter scenes and dull scenes on the video whatever you are viewing. Play at least 5 mins to realise the difference on the vlc player.
- Close the Plex player and player the video file on vlc. Set the brightness to 50%
- Play the same 5 mins played previously.
- Most importantly make sure to use a pixel phone.
- Please report if you see a dark tint on the Plex player.
And how can I prove this to you? If I take a video or photo with my other pixels, the nightmode and google post processing is kicking in and not showing what I intend to show you.
I use a Pixel 7. I played a file from my phone in VLC and added that same file to my server and played it though Plex. They look the same to me. I did not alter any brightness
The video player brightness for VLC depends on the player itself by swiping the left edge on the video, the brightness increases.
Please set it to 50% because this is easy to set the same on the Plex player which depends on the phone brightness. I am asking you to set it to 50% for unbiased and precise way to reproduce the issue.
If you don’t set any brightness on vlc sliding the left side of the screen then I guess it’ll be on auto by default.
Once you set both to 50%, you’ll notice a dark tint or a darker overall video on the Plex player as juxtaposing with VLC.
So you are manually changing the brightness in one app then surprised that is it different? That makes no sense to me. Just taping the brightness in VLC slightly one up makes it insanely bright and I cannot see any way to reset it to whatever it’s default is.( which still looks just the same to me when starting a video) . As far as I can see VLC just overrides the system brightness for itself while it is foregrounded. Even the buttons in the OSD are brighter when changing its brightness, not just the video that is playing. if i swipe back to close video I can see the list of videos in folder actually get dimmer.
In the end I assume you are asking for a brightness slider. Which is fine. But I think it is a mistake to try to get that to happen by treating it like some bug because the swiss army knife of video players does something you want ours to do.
I have repeatedly mentioned in all my replies to set both Plex player and vlc to 50%.
I believe, for now, the Plex player’s brightness can only be tuned by adjusting the android display brightness. You can set your pixels display brightness to 50% by holding on the brightness slider and moving it slightly to see a circle at the 50% percentile. Place the slider at the 50th percentile and proceed to play in plex. And for VLC it’s just sliding left hand side to 50.
Please try again if I didn’t convey clearly earlier that I wanted you to set both to 50. If a brightness slider fixes this then great but I don’t understand if it’ll ever be implemented. It’s a hassle to increase the brightness on the device just to view 30 mins of content before sleep and then exiting the player will have all static elements like my apps and app drawer so effin bright. It’s so annoying to notch it down again.
If a brightness slider fixes this, I would be happy.
And again, player brightness should be in the player and not in the device settings where I’ll have to scroll through all the deluge of notifications to get to my brightness slider in quick settings menu. It’s quite annoying to do that.
If Plex has its own brightness slider, I guess it’ll fix? I don’t know..
If it fixes it, please try to implement it.
For years, we have been using external players for Android and all of a sudden that is taken away. With just the 4th release, Plex player already has everything VLC does except for the audio boost and this brightness issue we are talking about. Thank you for your work and the entire Plex team! 
Ok this is going in circles so I’m bowing out of this discussion.
If you want it make a feature request please do so. I have absolutely nothing against it. It is not my decision whether it adding a system brightness override while video is playing gets implemented or not.
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