I'd like to add the good 'ol volume mixer back in the tray

Hi Brink,

Thanks for posting this. I hope you can help me in the right direction with something similar: I'd like to add the good 'ol volume mixer back in the tray because the new volume mixer sux monkey balls. I read about eartrumpet, but haven't tried it. I've tried a few "minimize to tray" apps, which sometimes work, but they're not ideal for the volume mixer window.

This is the best I've got so far: You can make a shortcut on the desktop to sndvol.exe and can pin it to the taskbar.
The path to the file is simply: C:\Windows\System32\SndVol.exe
You can even force the location of the window to open in the right bottom of the screen (no, it won't remember the last place you closed it for some reason). This article pointed out that you can add a parameter to set the location: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/WINDOWS/en-US/bcf14f54-096c-472f-8b5c-911da7073bfe/win7-how-to-position-volume-mixer-window?forum=windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues

I have tried to add the shortcut to the list of startup apps with the window set to minimized, but this doesn't add it to the tray, unfortunately.



So, how can I get the volume mixer (or any other app) to show up in the list of taskbar corner icons?
There must be a way to add it to the list of taskbar corner icons if you wanted to...


I've searched the registry but couldn't find any reference, so maybe you'll have more luck than me and are able to figure it out.

Your best bet is EarTrumpet but on Win 11 you will then have 2 Vol icons until we can hide/remove the default one.

You could try the UndockingDisabled reg hack...

Edwin said:

You could try the UndockingDisabled reg hack...

View attachment 4844

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What I think OP wants is some sort of proper controls - like the old XP system had for example In the mixer each device had balance and further down you could even adjust bass and treble.



Not sure why that disappeared in later Windows -- perhaps people are so used to those hideous bud earphones that any sort of sensible mixer probably would be wasted on them. !!

Seems for its time XP had a whole slew of good stuff in it - OS's apart from security and efficiency seem to have gone downhill ever since. This was on Bog standard XP not even the Multi-media edition.

XP even had a decent free email client (outlook express) which could handle IMAP,POP3 and exchange servers and multiple accounts and the old Netmeeting --remember Internet was quite slow in those days) was really good in collaborative software -- it's taken Ms years to get something like TEAMS working to be anything as convenient or good.


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

What I think OP wants is some sort of proper controls...

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The OP's Target is the standard volume mixer.

hi vayana
do you mean something like this

Edwin said:

The OP's Target is the standard volume mixer.

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EarTrumpet gives him both:

jh30uk said:

EarTrumpet gives him both:

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^^ Thanks to your link (the little video) I now know (did not before) you can decide what device is used for what source, for example I can make sure VLC/MPC-BE always use the Optical on my ZxR.

If you have a realtek audio manager, the volume mixer can be launched from there. I did not have to do any hack on this. It is just there.

jh30uk said:

^^ Thanks to your link (the little video) I now know (did not before) you can decide what device is used for what source, for example I can make sure VLC/MPC-BE always use the Optical on my ZxR.

Click to expand...

I only started using EarTrumpet about 2 weeks ago when someone on the reddit windows 11 group mentioned it but haven't really had time to use it yet.

I am on the Dev build (on main homepage), just in case any tweaks for Win 11.

Added top SoundSwitch it makes Win 10/11 more usable.