Using volumeupbuttons/volumedownbuttons in your Cordova/Capacitor App

1 min readDec 29, 2022

To be able to override the hardware volume buttons on your Android device. You don’t require to install a plugin. Event listeners are provided within the Cordova/Capacitor framework to cater for that.

volumeupbutton

document.addEventListener("volumeupbutton", buttonHandler, false);

function buttonHandler() {
 // Handle the volume up button
}

volumedownbutton

document.addEventListener("volumedownbutton", buttonHandler, false);

function buttonHandler() {
 // Handle the volume down button
}

Callback Function

For both events volumeupbutton and volumedownbutton, a callback is triggered once the user presses the hardware volume buttons. In these examples, the callback is the buttonHandler function.

Use Cases

There are different use cases where these event listeners can be really helpful. Some are listed below.

Capture images
Record video
Trigger speech recognition service
Trigger hardware torch
Go back to the previous page or go forward
Etc

Troubleshooting

If ever when going to the background and returning to your app, the app stops listening to the events and requires you to tap on the view to continue using the events, you have lost focus on your view of your app.

webView.getView().requestFocus();

Add the line above to request focus on the view to be able to fix that.