Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Is it possible to set the audio volume using the terminal instead of clicking the speaker icon in the top bar?
The reason I want to do this is that my keyboard does not have volume increase/decrease buttons and I find it annoying to reach for the mouse.
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.
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%
man amixer suggests that the they are equivalent and that the "s" in "sset" stands for "simple". There's also a "cset" that sets card control contents.
– Matthias Braun
Oct 7 '18 at 13:25
.bashrc to make this command easier: volume() { amixer sset 'Master' $1%; }
– Philip Kirkbride
Jan 24 at 16:21
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.
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.
pactl commands that take negative percentage arguments will fail with an 'invalid option' error. Use the standard shell -- pseudo argument to disable argument parsing before the negative argument. e.g. pactl set-sink-volume 1 -- -5%
– Jamie Cockburn
Aug 25 '15 at 8:01
-- with negative values (percentage, db, integers... they all work fine). In fact, it's quite the opposite: if I use -- as per the wiki e.g. pactl set-sink-volume 1 -- -3% I get Invalid volume specification.
– don_crissti
Aug 25 '15 at 10:02
--, I get an invalid option.
– Jamie Cockburn
Aug 25 '15 at 10:58
bash and zsh). Probably earlier versions of pactl had this problem and upstream most likely fixed it (I'm using v. 6.0).
– don_crissti
Aug 25 '15 at 11:08
I know this is an old one. Since Alsa and pulseaudio are so connected, this answer from askubuntu helped me 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 work too.
These are "more natural for human ear".
To get the master in the alsamixer units, use:
amixer -M get Master
To raise the volume by 5% in the alsamixer units, for example:
amixer -M set Master 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"
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.
amixer sget Master | grep 'Right:' | awk -F'[][]' '{ print $2 }'Increase Master volume level by 10%:amixer -q sset Master 10%+– Eric Leschinski Jan 21 '19 at 18:04