Volume control and volume notifications for i3wm

• 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

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

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 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.

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

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:

• 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.

i3-volume is released under GNU General Public License v2

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