Boosting volume in bspwm and pipewire

Desktop Environments All WMs
1

Plasma it is easy, just tick a box, any ideas how to boost in bspwm,
without using pavucontrol?

1 Like
2

You can just scroll (up/down) in polybar where volume icon is

3

That only goes to 100%… Plasma can go higher.

1 Like
4

@xircon Wonder how I missed this thread!

You can set this value in polybar config.ini

use-ui-max = true

this will allow you to raise volume upto 153%.

Just search for this option first, if this is false. Change it to true. If this deosn’t exist in your config file at all, then create it under the pulseaudio module.

For reference, I am sharing my pulseaudio module code

Notice that the first option ofter the comments is one you should change.

[module/pulseaudio]
type = internal/pulseaudio

; Sink to be used, if it exists (find using `pacmd list-sinks`, name field)
; If not, uses default sink
; sink = alsa_output.pci-0000_12_00.3.analog-stereo
; sink = alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo

; Use PA_VOLUME_UI_MAX (~153%) if true, or PA_VOLUME_NORM (100%) if false
; Default: true
use-ui-max = true

; Interval for volume increase/decrease (in percent points)
; Default: 5
interval = 5

; Available tags:
;   <label-volume> (default)
;   <ramp-volume>
;   <bar-volume>
format-volume = <label-volume>

; Available tags:
;   <label-muted> (default)
;   <ramp-volume>
;   <bar-volume>
format-muted = <label-muted>

; Available tokens:
;   %percentage% (default)
;   %decibels% (unreleased)
label-volume = %{T2}%percentage%%%{T-}

; Available tokens:
;   %percentage% (default)
;   %decibels% (unreleased)
label-muted = %{T1} %{T-}
label-muted-foreground = #666

; Only applies if <ramp-volume> is used
ramp-volume-0 = %{T1}🔈%{T-}
ramp-volume-1 = %{T1}🔉%{T-}
ramp-volume-2 = %{T1}🔊%{T-}

; Right and Middle click (unreleased)
click-right = pavucontrol &
; click-middle =

Edit : I am assuming that you can raise volume beyond 100 via pavucontrol.

Edit 2: I thought this was posted in Feb 21. It’s actually Feb 20. Guess I bumped a very old post. If you say this thread can be closed. @xircon

5

Don’t use a bar at all, any other way?

6

Tiny script I just patched up. Use sxhkd to invoke this script instead of the usual commands.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

maxvol=200

vol=$(pactl list sinks | grep '^[[:space:]]Volume:' | \
    head -n $(( $SINK + 1 )) | tail -n 1 | sed -e 's,.* \([0-9][0-9]*\)%.*,\1,')

if [ $vol -lt $maxvol ]
then
    pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +5%
fi

Need to have a maximum volume option, bcause pactl tends to increase volume to very high percentage too.

Decrease with just

pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -5%