Show HN: RingtoneSmartKit – Kotlin Library for Android Ringtones

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3 points AmjdAlhashede | 4 comments | 03 Jul 25 15:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.897s | source

I built RingtoneSmartKit – an open-source Kotlin library for managing Android ringtones in a simple and reliable way.

It supports: - Setting system ringtones: alarm, notification, and incoming call - Assigning custom ringtones to contacts - Working directly with audio from assets or content URIs - No need for Context or Activity — making integration easier anywhere in your app

The goal is to provide a clean, reusable solution for ringtone handling without relying on messy platform code.

Feedback, testing, and suggestions are very welcome!

1. atmanactive ◴[04 Jul 25 09:21 UTC] No.44462783[source]▶
What I find myself doing over and over again is customizing Android notification tones for various apps. I really find it beneficial when I can tell from the sound from my pocket which app would like to notify me at that point in time. I really wish there was an app that could manage all that, including exporting/importing everything configured, so I could reuse that and not be forced to rebuild it from scratch on each and every new Android.

Can this library change notification sounds for individual apps and their channels?

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2. AmjdAlhashede ◴[05 Jul 25 12:12 UTC] No.44472226[source]▶
Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

To clarify: this library is focused on managing *system ringtones* only — like the default notification tone, alarm tone, call ringtone, and assigning tones to contacts.

Unfortunately, changing the notification sounds of *individual apps or their notification channels* is not possible from outside those apps. Android does not allow third-party apps or libraries to modify another app’s notification settings, due to strict sandboxing and security restrictions.

Your idea is great — I agree it would be really helpful to have a solution that backs up and restores those customizations across devices. But that would require deep system access or cooperation from each individual app, which is out of scope for this library.

Still, your feedback is appreciated! It might inspire companion tools in the future

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3. atmanactive ◴[05 Jul 25 12:27 UTC] No.44472326{3}[source]▶
We'll just have to wait for Android to expose that in an API, it seems.

By the way, the apps themselves are not controlling this, except maybe for eBay and Monzo (the only two out of 100 apps on my phone). Most of the time I have to go to settings->apps->notifications and customize the sound. Also, for all chat apps I like to have silent notifications configured. Except for Element, which I use for my family exclusively, and that one needs to have a loud and prominent sound.

So, eBay and Monzo are leading the way, but majority of apps are still not there and leave up to user/settings/android to control their sound and just default to whatever is the main notification sound on the device.