SoundTap app lets you use your Android smartphone like a Walkman

I’m not a 90s kid. And so naturally, I don’t really relate to the nostalgia associated with Sony’s Walkman music players. I do, however, get the appeal of it. The Walkman was a device that not only allowed you to carry your music with you but also controlled playback at the tap of a button. Come the late 2000s though, the Walkman slowly became a thing of the past.

Next came Nokia’s XpressMusic-branded phones, which got dedicated physical controls for music playback. As did Sony Ericsson’s Walkman-branded phones. However, as touchscreens began to replace physical buttons on phones over the years, dedicated (physical) playback controls for music on them slowly faded away as well. Until now that is.

And no, we’re not talking about a new smartphone. What we’re actually talking about is the SoundTap app which lets you turn the volume rockers on your Android smartphone into dedicated controls for music and video playback. I happened to use it for a week, and here are my thoughts.

What is the SoundTap app?

SoundTap, as mentioned earlier, allows you to turn your smartphone’s volume rockers into controls for music and video playback. It doesn’t just allow you to play or pause a song, video or podcast on your phone. It also lets you rewind them, fast forward them, or even skip to the next or previous ones, using just your volume rockers. And that’s not all. You can even set a sequence on the volume buttons for triggering said actions, and decide on the duration you need to press the buttons to do so, as per your preferences.

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You may wonder why this is useful. Well, picture this: you’re grappling with multiple spreadsheets at work, listening to a bit of music while working on them to get into a flow, and you need to change songs. But you don’t want to look at your phone screen, lest you get distracted. Or maybe you’re going about your chores at home and don’t exactly have the time to look at your phone. Well, it’s situations like these where SoundTap comes in.

SoundTap: Things I liked about the app

Firstly, it was how easy the app was to use. Once you install it, you’ve got to give it a few basic permissions. Some of these include access to your notification bar and your accessibility settings, which helps it detect the volume buttons and control them.

Once you‘re through with the initial setup, you’re greeted by a screen with a big power button on the bottom right. The ‘customize controls’ menu under ‘customize’ lets you add your own personalised actions to control playback via your volume buttons. Here, you can decide whether to let the app function whether only when the screen is on or off, or both. Additionally, the app also lets you decide if you’d like to allow it to work only when your phone is connected to your headset, or when you’re listening to the audio output through its speakers.

You can also customise the haptic feedback pattern for all actions, as well as decide on the duration of the long presses required to trigger specific actions.

The coolest bit for me, though, was how the app allows you to even develop your own custom sequences to push the volume buttons, each of which allows you to trigger an action of your choice. This allowed me to truly personalise the app to my preferences, depending on the app I was playing back content on.

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This brings us to the fact that SoundTap is compatible with several apps on my phone, including Spotify, YouTube and Netflix (the three streaming services I tend to use most frequently). What’s more, while using each of these three apps, I could modify the controls on the fly, which is another nice touch.

SoundTap: Things I didn’t like so much

Now, the SoundTap app does have a lot going for it. However, the app, like many others, isn’t entirely without fault.

First is the fact that while the volume rockers can be used as dedicated playback controls, one must remember that the volume rockers, first and foremost, are used to control the sound output levels on your device. If you accidentally set the duration to press said buttons to trigger other actions through SoundTap, it can interfere with the volume levels on your device. Which, is a bit of an annoyance, to say the least.

Second is the fact that while it works really well with Spotify, it unfortunately does lag, and often completely stops responding when being used with YouTube or Netflix. This, in turn, forced me to turn to my on-screen controls at times again. While this was not much of an inconvenience when I wasn’t occupied with anything else, I did find it to be a bother when I was working on the side.

Third, people who are not too inclined towards tinkering with their phone’s accessibility settings generally may find the initial setup process a tad confusing, while granting the app permissions.

All said and done though, none of the aforementioned issues were big enough to be a dealbreaker. And the SoundTap app, on the whole, is one I might just continue using from this point onwards. Considering how many of these issues can be solved with updates in the future.

How to get the SoundTap app

The SoundTap app is entirely free to use and can be downloaded from Google Play Store, on Android smartphones. Bonus: it also has absolutely no annoying advertisements that pop up, which is a welcome change from most other free or freemium apps for Android devices today.

Unfortunately, the app isn’t available for iPhones yet. Hopefully, the developers consider releasing it on the App Store very soon as well, for the app is undeniably handy, and not to mention, quite cool at the same time.