Set volume from terminal

Question

Is it possible to set the audio volume using the terminal?, instead of clicking the speaker icon in the topbar, the reason I want need to do this is because my keyboard does not have a volume increase/decrease buttons and I find it annoying to reach for the mouse.

Answer 1

For interactive usage you can use alsamixer. For scripting (e.g. binding to key combinations) take a look at amixer.

alsamixer is included by default in most systems.

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To set the master volume use:

# Gets a list of simple mixer controls
$ amixer scontrols 

Then set it to the desired volume, as an example

$ amixer sset 'Master' 50%

Answer 2

Found in Openbox's configuration file rc.xml:

# increase by 3%
amixer -q sset Master 3%+

# decrease by 3%
amixer -q sset Master 3%-

# mute/unmute
amixer -q sset Master toggle

amixer manual page can give more details.

Answer 3

you can also try pamixer, a recent project that does exactly what you want. It is in the ArchLinux AUR repository with the same name.