🔊 volctl

Per-application volume control and OSD for Linux desktops.

I couldn't find a simple tray icon that allows to control multiple applications easily from the task bar. So I wrote my own.

Bug reports and patches welcome!

It's not meant to be a replacement for a full-featured mixer application. If you're looking for that check out the excellent pavucontrol.

Features

• Runs on virtually every desktop environment (via SNI, see System tray host)
• Control main volumes as well as individual applications
• Mute individual applications
• Shows application icons and names
• Per-application VU meter
• Click to open the mixer popup; right-click to open pavucontrol (or custom mixer application)
• Mouse-wheel support
• On-screen volume display (OSD)
• OSD customizable via CSS file
• Supports X11 and Wayland

Installation

System tray host

The tray icon uses SNI, so something in the session has to provide a tray host: KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, MATE, LXQt, GNOME (with an extension), waybar's tray module on Hyprland and other Wayland compositors, etc. Window managers with an XEmbed-only systray (dwm and derivatives) need a bridge such as snixembed. Without any tray host volctl still runs, but only the OSD works: the mixer popup and the preferences are reached from the tray icon.

Arch Linux

Available in AUR: volctl or volctl-bin

Cargo

Install from source using Cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/buzz/volctl.git

Install the GSettings schema manually.

Manual installation

1. Clone this repository and build in release mode:

   cargo build --release

2. Copy the binary to a location in your $PATH:

   cp target/release/volctl ~/.local/bin/

Install the GSettings schema manually.

GSettings schema installation

volctl uses GSettings to store preferences. The schema file must be installed for the settings to work. Copy the schema XML and compile the schemas:

PREFIX="${HOME}/.local"
mkdir -p "$PREFIX/share/glib-2.0/schemas/"
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buzz/volctl/main/data/apps.volctl.gschema.xml \
  -o "$PREFIX/share/glib-2.0/schemas/apps.volctl.gschema.xml"
glib-compile-schemas "$PREFIX/share/glib-2.0/schemas/"

OSD appearance

The OSD can be customized with ~/.config/volctl/osd.css, reloaded on change (no restart needed). The OSD window is a regular GTK4 CSS node (selected as .osd-window), so standard CSS properties apply, e.g.:

.osd-window {
    background-color: #002b36;
    color: #e6ebef; /* text and volume bars */
    border-radius: 12px;
    border: 1px solid #ffffff33;
}

Notes:

• color styles the text and the volume bars
• backdrop-filter needs GTK 4.24+ and a compositor with backdrop blur support
• box-shadow/outline are only visible when inset (the surface has no shadow margin)
• font properties have no effect (the font is set in code)
• @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) works on GTK 4.20+

Development

Run from source

cargo run

Linting and formatting

cargo clippy
cargo fmt

Rust Rewrite

This is a Rust rewrite of the original Python version. The Python implementation is still available on the legacy-python branch.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later