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Tired of apps changing your microphone volume without your consent? Or Windows constantly switching to the wrong audio device?

Volume Locker is a tray icon app that keeps the volume of your audio devices locked and manages your audio and communication devices based on priority lists. It is a portable, ~1MB binary written in Rust for Windows.

Never worry about your microphone volume or audio devices again!

Simply grab the executable from the releases page, place it somewhere like C:\Apps\Volume Locker\VolumeLocker.exe and run it.

Or you can copy and paste this into Windows PowerShell, and execute:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path 'C:\Apps\Volume Locker' -Force >$null; `
  Get-Process | Where-Object { $_.Path -eq 'C:\Apps\Volume Locker\VolumeLocker.exe' } | Stop-Process; `
  curl.exe --progress-bar --location --output 'C:\Apps\Volume Locker\VolumeLocker.exe' `
  'https://github.com/felipecrs/volume-locker/releases/latest/download/VolumeLocker.exe'; `
  Start-Process 'C:\Apps\Volume Locker\VolumeLocker.exe'

You can also use the snippet above to update the app, just run it again.

Click on the Volume Locker tray icon to access the menu. The menu is organized into the following sections:

1. Output devices: List of active output devices.
2. Input devices: List of active input devices.
3. Output device priority: Priorities for output and communication audio.
4. Input device priority: Priorities for input and communication microphones.
5. Temporary priority: Quick temporary overrides for any audio role.

To lock the volume or unmute state of a specific device:

1. Navigate to Output devices or Input devices.
2. Select the desired device.
3. Check Keep volume locked to lock the volume at the current level.
4. Check Keep unmuted to prevent the device from being muted.
5. You can also enable notifications for these actions.

Volume Locker can automatically switch your audio devices based on a priority list.

1. Navigate to Output device priority or Input device priority in the tray menu. The active devices are shown under Current: .
2. Open Device priority settings to manage the priority list:
   • Check Notify on restore to receive a notification when switching devices based on priority.
   • Use Move up and Move down to adjust device order. The top device has highest priority.
   • Under Add device, select a device to Add to top or Add to bottom.
3. Open Communication priority settings to configure communication routing.

Output and input each support an independent communication priority list for voice calls and chat apps.

1. Open Communication priority settings under output or input.
2. By default, communication follows the main priority list (Output device priority or Input device priority).
3. You can reorder priorities, add specific devices to take precedence over following the main list, or remove the main priority entry.
4. Check Notify on restore inside communication priority settings to receive notifications when communication devices switch.

Temporarily route audio to a specific device without altering your saved priority lists:

1. Open Temporary priority in the tray menu.
2. Select the desired role: Output, Communication, Input, or Communication. The submenu label displays the selected device when active.
3. Select the device to use temporarily. It remains active until unchecked or when the app restarts. Temporary communication overrides take precedence over configured communication priorities.

Volume Locker started as my first Rust project, born from the dissatisfaction with existing solutions that relied on closed-source tools or lacked specific device locking capabilities. It has since evolved to include advanced features like default device priority management.

I used wolfinabox/Windows-Mic-Volume-Locker for years before deciding to write my own solution.

I was inspired by AntoineGS/teams-status-rs being so amazing in such a lightweight package. I wanted to do something similar, but for volume locking.

Special thanks to:

• Kingloo/volume for the Windows volume control code foundation.
• tauri-apps/tray-icon for the tray icon implementation.
• GitHub Copilot for assisting with the code structure, syntax, and feature implementation.
• @jmb for the great icon design.