i3-volume

Volume control and volume notifications for i3wm

Installation

Requirements

• i3wm - A better tiling and dynamic window manager
• alsa-utils (if not using pulseaudio-utils) - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture utils
• pulseaudio-utils (if not using alsa-utils) - Sound system for POSIX OSes

Optional

• A libnotify compatible notification daemon such as notify-osd or dunst
• notify-send (provided by libnotify) or dunstify (provided by dunst)

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users may find PKGBUILD in aur.

ALSA mixer and PulseAudio

Volume control can be done through either alsa-utils, pulseaudio-utils, or both. The example configuration uses pulseaudio-utils. If you want to use alsa-utils instead, comment out the bindsyms under pulseaudio-utils and uncomment the bindsyms under alsa-utils.

Notifications

Notifications are provided by libnotify. Any libnotify compatible notification daemon can be used for notifications. The most common are notify-osd and dunst. To disable notifications remove the -n option from the bindsyms in the example configuration below.

If you are using dunst, you may optionally choose to use dunstify instead of notify-send by adding the -y option to the bindsyms in the example configuration below.

Expiration time of notifications can be changed using the -e <time_in_milliseconds> option. Default is 1500 ms.

Guide

Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/hastinbe/i3-volume.git ~/i3-volume

Edit the following example and append it to your ~/.config/i3/config:

## Volume control

# Path to volume control, without trailing slash
set $volumepath ~/i3-volume

# Command for the status line (used with -t, requires -u)
#   ie: i3blocks, i3status
set $statuscmd i3status

# Signal used to update the status line (used with -u, requires -t)
#   i3blocks uses SIGRTMIN+10 by default
#   i3status uses SIGUSR1 by default
set $statussig SIGUSR1

# Amount to increase/decrease volume as a percentage (used with -i, -d)
set $volumestep 5

# alsa-utils settings when not using pulseaudio-utils
#
# To configure a default card, see https://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Asoundrc
#
# Card number to control. (used with -a and -c)
#   If not specified, i3-volume will let `amixer` use a default.
#   List cards: aplay -l
#set $alsacard 1

# Uncomment to use alsa-utils (append "-c $alsacard" without quotes to override default card)
#bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec $volumepath/volume -anp -i $volumestep -t $statuscmd -u $statussig
#bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec $volumepath/volume -anp -d $volumestep -t $statuscmd -u $statussig
#bindsym XF86AudioMute        exec $volumepath/volume -amn -t $statuscmd -u $statussig

# pulseaudio-utils settings when not using alsa-utils
#
# Symbolic name for sink (numeric index not supported) (used with -s $sinkname)
#   Recommended: comment out this setting and omit the -s option to use default sink
#   List sink names: pacmd list-sinks | awk -F "[<>]" '/^\s+name: <.*>/{print $2}'
#set $sinkname alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo

# Using pulseaudio-utils (append "-s $sinkname" without quotes to override default sink)
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec $volumepath/volume -np -i $volumestep -t $statuscmd -u $statussig
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec $volumepath/volume -np -d $volumestep -t $statuscmd -u $statussig
bindsym XF86AudioMute        exec $volumepath/volume -mn -t $statuscmd -u $statussig

Reload i3 configuration by pressing mod+Shift+r

Usage

Use your keyboard volume keys to increase, decrease, or mute your volume. If you have a volume indicator in your status line it will be updated to reflect the volume change (requires -t $statuscmd and -u $statussig to be set). When notifications are enabled (-n flag) a popup will display the volume level.

Example of notifications using notify-osd:

Common Issues

• alsa-utils won't unmute if pulseaudio is running. You must disable pulseaudio's auto respawn and terminate the pulseaudio process. Or use pulseaudio-utils for unmuting.
• dunst isn't displaying icons in notifications. icon_position needs to be set to either left or right (default is off) in your ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc.
• dunst icons are too small. Change icon_path in your ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc to a path containing larger icons, such as /usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/status/:/usr/share/icons/gnome/32x32/devices/. Alternatively try increasing max_icon_size

Note only one notification daemon can be running at the same time. dunst can't be running for notifications to go through notify-osd and vice-versa.

License

i3-volume is released under GNU General Public License v2

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.