While an assistant-enabled device is playing back media content, a method includes receiving a contextual signal from an environment of the assistant-enabled device and executing an event recognition routine to determine whether the received contextual signal is indicative of an event that conflicts with the playback of the media content from the assistant-enabled device. When the event recognition routine determines that the received contextual signal is indicative of the event that conflicts with the playback of the media content, the method also includes adjusting content playback settings of the assistant-enabled device.