It wasn’t all that long ago when PulseAudio came along, and for a while, it seemed that PulseAudio solved a lot of the issues usually associated with Linux and, well, audio (in general).
With time (I would say during the last couple of years especially), it became very apparent that PulseAudio had some limitations. That was also the time that PipeWire started to be all the rage.
PipeWire was such a step forward, that many consider it to be the future of Linux audio.
PipeWire is becoming more and more popular, so a bit more control over its functionality is something that most users, myself included, would like to see included by default on most Linux distros. Whether this will happen or not I cannot say, but the fact that I can rely on third-party apps for this task is really nice.
pwvucontrol is one such application, a volume control applet/manager for PipeWire.
Let’s talk features for a minute. Besides its simplistic, yet decently modern GUI, pwvucontrol comes with clean volume controls for PipeWire, the ability to mute individual sources, a peak level meter, and a nice media name display.
Other features include both default output and input device selection, card profile section, port selection for sinks and sources, as well as an output device (sink) drop-down menu, useful for streaming-related playback.
It’s definitely not the most impressive creation, but (for me, at least) it works flawlessly. I would have loved a bit more integration (especially with GNOME) like system tray integration and support, maybe a few GUI customization options, but overall, there’s really not much to reproach.
At the end of the day, pwvucontrol should be enough for most day-to-day users who simply want a bit more control over PipeWire.
