My favourite bad volume control was in Real Player around 1997 where changing the volume in the application actually changed the global volume of Windows.

I often write small userscripts to neutralise hostile or annoying UI patterns. I played the 'Hostile Volume' game for a while. Nice game! After a while, I wondered: if this were a real hostile website, could I write a userscript to make each level happy? Here is the script:

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name  Hostile Volume Winner
  // @match https://hostilevolume.com/
  // ==/UserScript==
  (function () {
    const s = document.createElement('script')
    s.textContent = `
      (function () {
        function visible (id) {
          return !document.getElementById(id).classList.contains('hidden')
        }
        function win () {
          if (visible('victory-screen')) return
          if (visible('instructions-modal')) {
            document.getElementById('start-btn').click()
            setTimeout(win, 2000)
            return
          }
          setTimeout(function () {
            document.getElementById('l13-age-input').value = '01011970'
            window.cancelAnimationFrame(levels[currentLevelIndex].frame)
          }, 100)
          window.setVolume(25)
          setTimeout(win, 3500)
        }
        win()
      })()
    `
    document.body.appendChild(s)
  })()

I am familiar with this game. I play a variant of it on iOS everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, with my AirPods and iPhone. I'm not very good though. Somehow iOS always wins and finds a hostile volume to initiate playback with regardless of what I do with the UI.

This is not an issue at all, but when ever I come across something like it, I like to poke at the frontend in dev tools a bit. You can pass most levels with `setVolume(25)` in the web console, since that function is just sitting in the document object. That feels like the ultimate volume UI puzzle heh.

There are two types of volume slider I've encountered thus far, "too logarithmic", and "not logarithmic enough".

This works for almost all levels:

   for (i = 0; i < 50; i++) { document.querySelector("#l3-down").click(); }

Great fun, well done to the horrible person who made it. Apparently my RSS reader leaves the browswr live in the background, as the audio is still playing. Horrible to do on a mobile device. Worst level by far was 17.

The worst volume control UI in the world (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27819384

Laughed out loud but gave up at level 5

Im just happy theres someone out there who cares for masochists.

Finished the game. It was fun to play. I got stuck for a while on the opposite level where the display doesn't update, but was able to go through the rest just fine

Got an error on Level 17, just a heads up.

Love the game, btw.

Level 17 is NOT bugged. The slider is backward and the volume nonresponsive. Its a planned feature.

Hilarious, some of them are easy with the keyboard

Level 27 is not possible.

I have encountered the rate-limited spinner (#8) and the self-resizing slider (#5) in real desktop UIs.

#3 are almost like Google Maps' zooming buttons. They jump around more, making you click on the map itself or swap in/out.

somehow i'm amazed and annoyed at the same time

Plenty of annoyance in here for sure. Looks like 17 cannot be finished on mobile though. Switching to desktop view resets progress.

Prwtty neat. Unfortunately wasn't able to solve the UI desync one :/

These mostly seem to be variations of "takes a long time / is tedious" rather than "annoying/fiddly / takes skill / is creatively bad", which is a little disappointing.

...and, of course, there's really no need for a volume control in any app, since there's already a system volume...

Meanwhile, iPhone is still using this design https://xkcd.com/1884/