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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by lvxferre@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I often switch between phones and speakers, but I'm too lazy to do it through the sound preferences window. So I came up with this script*, and I'm sharing it here as others might find it useful.

You'll need to tweak it a bit to work in your machine, but once you do it you can run it from a launcher or a keyboard shortcut, it's really comfy.

Okay, here's the code:


#!/bin/bash

# You'll need to swap those four values with the ones that work in your machine.
# Check the rest of the post for further info.
mainCard="pci-0000_06_00.1"
mainProfile="hdmi-stereo-extra1"
altCard="pci-0000_00_09.2"
altProfile="analog-stereo"

# If the current default source is main, your new source is alt. Else, your new is main.
if [[ $(pactl get-default-source) == "alsa_output.$mainCard.$mainProfile.monitor" ]]
then declare -g newCard="$altCard" newProfile="$altProfile"
else declare -g newCard="$mainCard" newProfile="$mainProfile"
fi

# Tells PulseAudio to shift the card profile and default sink to the new.
pactl set-card-profile "alsa_card.${newCard}" "output:${newProfile}"
pacmd set-default-sink "alsa_output.${newCard}.${newProfile}" &> /dev/null\

# Tells PulseAudio to shift the currently running programs to use the new output.
for i in $(pacmd list-sink-inputs | grep index | awk '{print $2}')
do pacmd move-sink-input "$i" "alsa_output.${newCard}.${newProfile}" &> /dev/null
done

# Optional text notification.
if [[ $(pactl get-default-source) == "alsa_output.$mainCard.$mainProfile.monitor" ]]
then notify-send -t 500 "Main sound output on!"
elif [[ $(pactl get-default-source) == "alsa_output.$altCard.$altProfile.monitor" ]]
then notify-send -t 500 "Alt sound output on!"
else notify-send -t 2000 "Something weird happened."
fi

# Optional audio notification. It runs VLC but it's easy to adapt or remove if you want.
cvlc --play-and-exit /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/message-new-instant.oga


Check the first four lines of code. You'll need to replace that "pci.blahblah" and "audio.stereo.whatever" junk with the ones from your machine. To know them, run pacmd list-sources | grep name: in a terminal. The output will look like this:

name: ⟨alsa_output.pci-0000_06_00.1.hdmi-stereo-extra1.monitor⟩
name: ⟨alsa_output.pci-0000_00_09.2.analog-stereo.monitor⟩

Ignore ⟨alsa_output and monitor⟩. The second-to-last chunk (e.g. hdmi-stereo-extra1) is the profile. The rest (e.g. pci-0000_06_00.1) is the card. Now replace those in the script.

*credits: this script is partially inspired on this AskUbuntu comment.

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[-] konomikitten@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 year ago

I have a project I made that offers a GUI for this if anyone is interested: https://gitlab.com/konomikitten/pa-mv

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

This is great! It looks more serious than my method, that smells "dirty hack" from a distance. Glad to see other people tacking the UX issue.

[-] recreate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

This is very cool!

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

NOTE: Lemmy is hellbent on replacing the "&" in the code with "& amp;". You'll probably want to undo it before running this code.

[-] dr_jekell@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

There is mark-up that turns text blocks to a code block that doesn't change anything.

You can also try pasting it into a text editor as what you copied it from may be at fault (Microsoft word is known to do this).

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I used Pluma to do this, so the issue is mostly Lemmy. (IIRC the devs did this to avoid some XSS).

I'm aware of the ``` mark-up (I didn't use it to highlight the code in pink - useful to set it apart from the comments), is there another?

(I also had to replace the angle brackets with ⟨⟩, glad that I had those due to Linguistics. Otherwise Lemmy just noms on them for breakfast.)

[-] dr_jekell@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You can use the greater-than sign to make code blocks but for some reason it then picks up your use of pound sign as the formatting for headers even though putting text into a code block should stop that.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

People still use pulseaudio? Pipewire works way better for me

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I should try pipewire out someday. The reason I'm using pulseaudio is basically "it's Mint default and I didn't bother changing it".

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

Really? I though mint moved to pipewire. I guess I'll need to go look to verify

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Now I'm genuinely confused, given that I got both PipeWire and PulseAudio packages installed, by default (I didn't mess with it):

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

I you look to see which one is running?

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

ps -e | pipewire says that pipewire failed to load, and pactl info outputs /run/user/1000/pulse/native for server string. As such, I think that PulseAudio is running without PipeWire.

It's... weird, though. I wonder why Mint does this. It's a relatively new instal running Mint 21.2.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

That's kind of weird. Maybe you could post it on the Linux mint forms

[-] Hominine@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this post, I'm looking forward to hammering something like this out myself and this is a great jumping off point. 👍

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

You're welcome! It ain't much but it's honest work. I also have other scripts that I don't mind sharing, but they're mostly dumb stuff, like a simple autoclick using xdotool.

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
58 points (98.3% liked)

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