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

If your system is using pulseaudio you could use pactl:

pactl set-sink-volume 0 +15%

or

pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5dB

though you could also specify an integer or a linear factor:

set-sink-volume SINK VOLUME [VOLUME ...]
          Set the volume of the specified sink (identified by its symbolic name or numerical index). VOLUME can be speci‐
          fied as an integer (e.g. 2000, 16384), a linear factor (e.g. 0.4, 1.100), a percentage (e.g. 10%, 100%) or a
          decibel value (e.g. 0dB, 20dB). If the volume specification start with a + or - the volume  adjustment  will  be
          relative to the current sink volume. A single volume value affects all channels; if multiple volume values are
          given their number has to match the sink's number of channels.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

In OS X use the following:

# highest
osascript -e "set Volume 7"
# lowest
osascript -e "set Volume 1"
# middle
osascript -e "set Volume 3.5"  

You can even set the volume to other fractional levels:

# 25%
osascript -e "set Volume 1.75"

Answer 6

I know this is an old one. Since Alsa and pulseaudio are so connected, this awnser from askubuntu: http://askubuntu.com/a/444183 helped me to manage the volume from both my main sound and the HDMI:

increase volume

amixer -q -D pulse sset Master 10%+

decrease volume

amixer -q -D pulse sset Master 10%-

toggle mute

amixer -q -D pulse sset Master toggle

Other amixer sset commands works too.