Set volume from terminal

Question

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.

Read Master Volume level in number percent 0%-100%: 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

score 123 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 20 '12 at 18:00

123

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%

edited Feb 20 '12 at 18:00

Tristian

1,539

answered Feb 20 '12 at 17:40

Renan

17,136

3

What is the different between "sset" and just "set". (I tried both, and both work) – Venryx Dec 06 '17 at 21:39
@Venryx 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 07 '18 at 13:25
4

Added the following to my .bashrc to make this command easier: volume() { amixer sset 'Master' $1%; } – Philip Kirkbride Jan 24 '20 at 16:21

score 58 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 20 '12 at 17:59

58

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.

answered Feb 20 '12 at 17:59

enzotib

51,661

score 35 · Answer 3 · answered May 12 '15 at 23:08

35

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.

answered May 12 '15 at 23:08

don_crissti

82,805

2

Note from arch linux wiki: 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 08:01
2

@JamieCockburn - I'm not sure when was that written but I use archlinux and there is absolutely no need for the additional -- 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
Must be dependent on shell then? I'm on ubuntu 14.04, with Xfce, and running the command from bash (4.3.11). If I omit the --, I get an invalid option. – Jamie Cockburn Aug 25 '15 at 10:58
2

@JamieCockburn - I don 't think the shell is relevant (for the record, it works fine for me with both 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
Right, well the standard pactl bundled with this distro seems to be 4.0. Hopefully my comment this will help others facing this issue! – Jamie Cockburn Aug 25 '15 at 11:44
1

@JamieCockburn i'm running ubuntu 16.04 xfce bash, and it works perfectly witout "--", just a note. – Reishin Feb 15 '16 at 15:47
In my case I wanted to control a different sink so I used pactl set-sink-volume 1 -5dB. – Andrew Nov 07 '16 at 20:25

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 06 '19 at 14:36

15

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.

edited Jan 06 '19 at 14:36

Matthias Braun

8,239

answered Mar 25 '16 at 04:34

Mathter

251

score 10 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 14 '16 at 15:49

10

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%+

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=135348

edited Dec 14 '16 at 15:49

sam

22,765

answered Dec 14 '16 at 15:43

Robson

101

score 7 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 17 '16 at 07:30

7

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"

edited Feb 17 '16 at 07:30

Community

1

answered May 07 '15 at 09:49

1''

357
1
4
7

Worth noting that you can also use the Mac volume buttons to change volume by fractional increments. – Wildcard Feb 17 '16 at 08:04
@Wildcard the Mac volume buttons are only in increments of 0.25 – 1'' Sep 07 '16 at 02:35

score 6 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 20 '13 at 17:46

6

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.

answered Feb 20 '13 at 17:46

fradeve

243
2
4

it's even in community repository now – Michal Polovka Nov 07 '18 at 22:33

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 09 '22 at 22:48

So, answer the question first: To increase the Master volume level by 10%, consider this snippet:

amixer -q sset Master 10%+

You can also set it to a specific value:

amixer -q sset Master 78%

This can also be found in other answers, but I try to extend to the comment by Eric Leschinski, which basically is a TL:DR;-ish answer.

To read the Master Volume level (human readable), you can use:

amixer sget Master

To get the number in percent (from 0% to 100%), you can pipe it into grep and awk:

amixer sget Master | grep 'Right:' | awk -F'[][]' '{ print $2 }'

On my notebook, I only have a mono-speaker, so the right code for me was:

amixer sget Master | grep 'Mono:' | awk -F'[][]' '{ print $2 }'

Set volume from terminal

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