Do you mean changing volumes?
- You can use tray applets like volumeicon, volwheel. I was using that but it wasn't like I wanted.
- You can use i3blocks statusbar. There is a volume block included in config file like this:
[volume]
label=vol
#label=♪
instance=Master
command=/usr/lib/i3blocks/volume
interval=once
signal=1
This will display the volume in the statusbar. Hovering over with mouse and scrolling will change the volume. Right click toggles muting.
To change volumes with keyboard you see here and here but also add pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks
to your commands so statusbar block will be refreshed. Like this:
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec "amixer set Master toggle ; pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks"
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec "amixer -M set Master 5%- ; pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks"
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec "amixer -M set Master 5%+ ; pkill -RTMIN+1 i3blocks"
If you mean things like notification sounds I'm sure it can be done by running commandline audio players as needed. In that case main question would be how to run commands when specific events happen.
A window manager does not in any way shape or form have anything to do with sound. Please see pulseaudio, pavucontrol, ponymix, multiple volume control applets to run in your tray
I guess what I was looking for was a way of actually getting one of those applets to actually work. Has that ever been done before? I see lots of documentation on how to get it to not work. I'm wondering if there's an actual build that has audio working in some way, shape or form.
I3 supports running any standard tray applets you could run in any other other wm/de. Personally I find its most useful to bind multimedia keys or an audio mode to shell functions. ponymix a simple cli to control pulse playerctl a simple cli to control various media players
The questions https://faq.i3wm.org/question/125/how-to-change-the-systems-volume/ and https://faq.i3wm.org/question/3747/enabling-multimedia-keys/ - among others - already cover this particular issue. Searching the FAQ for "sound" or "volume" will provide you a list.
What ales me is that the bind-keys (and anything to do with pactl) is failing in the config. scripts I use for toggling mute work, just not in ~/.i3/config. Any thoughts? new question?