Switch Audio Output With SoundSwitch
YOU’LL NEED THIS
THE BACK OF YOUR PC probably has both analog and digital audio outputs. Then there are Bluetooth headphones, USB headsets, the speakers on your monitor connected over HDMI, even external sound-processing boxes. For something that can’t generate more than a harsh beeping noise unaided, your PC can actually find many ways to make a noise.
Windows doesn’t always make it easy to switch between them, though, and is always liable to blast audio through your speakers when you don’t want it to, or to remain stubbornly silent when you try to connect something to its digital optical output.
SoundSwitch is an open-source utility that sets your PC’s audio output, and lets you choose a hotkey so you can swap the noise from speakers to headphones quickly. And it does the same for recording inputs too. It’s the work of coder Antoine Aflalo. Here’s how it works. –IAN EVENDEN
1 GET STARTED
You read MaximumPC, so we don’t need to tell you how to install this app. Once you’ve got it running, go to the Settings page. Here you can configure the app, tell it which inputs and outputs you want to switch between, and which combination of keys you want to use to do it. Settings opens automatically once you’ve finished installing, or you can right-click the icon in the System Tray and open it from the pop-up menu.
2 OUTPUTS
SoundSwitch is an unobtrusive app. Set it to start with Windows, and it sits in the System Tray. The first tab of its Settings page is Playback, where you choose the output your PC audio should use. Initially, you’re presented with a list of every output installed on your machine, sorted into those that are connected and disconnected [ Image A]. Put a check in the box next to the ones you’d like to use, then set the hotkey below (we found the default of [Alt] + [Ctrl] + [F11] a bit unwieldy, so try choosing a simpler one that doesn’t clash with others you’ve got set up), and ensure there’s a check in the “Hotkey enabled” box.
3 INPUTS The next tab, Recording, is exactly the same as Playback but handles your PC’s audio inputs, such as webcam mics, headsets, and line-in sockets. It even picked up our cell phone thanks to Windows 10’s A2DP feature, which lets you stream audio from a smartphone to your PC—presumably for recording purposes, as why wouldn’t you just connect it straight to your speakers? Anyway, set your input-switch hotkey and move on.
4 PROFILES One of SoundSwitch’s cleverest features, you can set it to automatically switch your input and output to specific devices when a trigger event happens, such as it detecting Steam’s Big Picture mode, a specific app opening, another hotkey, or just on PC startup. Add a profile from the Profiles tab, and configure it from the pop-up. When the trigger conditions are over—for instance if you close Big Picture mode—SoundSwitch will return the audio settings to the way they were before.
5 SETTINGS
Settings within Settings contains settings for your settings—obviously. Here you’ll find options to start the app automatically with Windows, install updates automatically, control tooltips, and choose what kind of notifications you receive. We like this last feature a lot, especially as it lets the app use Windows’ own notification system [ Image B], which keeps things tidy over to the right-hand side of the desktop, and can be blocked by Focus Assist. There’s also a “No Notifications” option, and a useful sound notification that comes out of the newly selected output device, so you’re doubly sure which one you’re using. You can check what’s selected at any time by hovering your mouse over the System Tray icon, and can control what information this tooltip contains.
>> Heartening to see is the large number of languages the utility is able to use—and there’s a project running on the developer’s site to translate it into even more.