Arch Linux

Alberto-Trujillo

Member

From: Poole, Dorset, UK

Registered: 2017-02-21

Posts: 70

[SOLVED] Sway waybar setup pulseaudio volume

Hi everyone, I would appreciate your opinion on the following:

I have Sway and Waybar installed on a system running Arch Linux.
In Waybar, the (pulseaudio) module that displays the audio volume is set to 40%, and I want to change it to 80%.
I included the following command in "~/.config/sway/config"

exec_always pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ 80%

When I restart, it shows 80%, but shortly after login, it goes back to 40%.
I also changed the volume using pavucontrol, and the same thing happens — it resets to the previous value.
It might be a conflict between PulseAudio and PipeWire, because the command,

$ > ps aux | grep -E 'pulse|pipe|wire'                                                                       ✔  19:44:40  
at          1182  0.0  0.1 585992 21868 ?        S<sl 19:07   0:00 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no --log-target=journal
at          1194  0.0  0.0 249072  7448 ?        Sl   19:07   0:00 /usr/lib/pulse/gsettings-helper
at          1275  0.0  0.0 100328 10872 ?        S<sl 19:07   0:00 /usr/bin/pipewire
at          1276  0.0  0.1 482652 22288 ?        S<sl 19:07   0:00 /usr/bin/wireplumber
at          2236  0.0  0.0   6636  4204 pts/0    S+   19:47   0:00 grep -E pulse|pipe|wire

How can I fix this behavior?

Thanks in advance,
Alberto

Last edited by Alberto-Trujillo (2025-04-24 09:31:09)

---

"I believe I never knew what the word 'round' meant until I saw the Earth from space."
(Aleksei Leonov)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,076

Re: [SOLVED] Sway waybar setup pulseaudio volume

You are going to have a conflict here yes.

If you want to fully switch to pipewire install pipewire-pulse and pipewire-alsa and accept all replacements (pipewire has commercial funding and is much more actively developed, likely the more future proof option). If you need to stick to pulseaudio for whatever reason, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePl … ntegration for how to coerce wireplumber into leaving your audio devices alone. You'll be able to keep using pactl as usual with either option.

Last edited by V1del (2025-04-23 18:18:59)

Alberto-Trujillo

Member

From: Poole, Dorset, UK

Registered: 2017-02-21

Posts: 70

Re: [SOLVED] Sway waybar setup pulseaudio volume

Thank you very much for your quick response.
Installed pipewire, etc. Removed pulseaudio, etc.
Rebooted the system and everything worked right out of the box.
Thanks, mate.

---

"I believe I never knew what the word 'round' meant until I saw the Earth from space."
(Aleksei Leonov)