Q4OS Forum

tbqhmhsfamilam

Member

Registered: 2018-03-30

Posts: 8

Laptop volume keys workaround

Hello I am testing Q4OS and it's great, but I did run into an issue with my laptop volume keys. I see some others have had this too so I'll post what worked for me. This is a workaround and not a bug fix. There seems to be an issue with kmix and pulseaudio.

1.) Change kmix default master channel

• Right click on kmix icon in system tray > Select master channel > change from Pulseaudio to your device (mine is hd-audio-generic) > OK

This should get your volume keys going, but unfortunately the "mute" button still's messed up. We can get that going by reassigning the mute button.

2.) Remove mute short cut

• Right click on kmix icon in system tray > Show mixer window > Settings > Configure global shortcuts > and set the shortcut for mute to none

Now you're free to reassign the mute button to whatever you want.

3.) Allow custom shortcuts

• Control Panel > Regional and Accessibility > Input Actions > Global Settings > General Settings > and uncheck Disable KHotKeys daemon

This allows your custom assignment to work. I don't know why it's default disabled, hopefully this doesn't cause issues elsewhere? I haven't seen anything yet in my limited usage so far.

4.) Setup custom amixer mute toggle functon

• (same location) > New action > Action name=mute > Action type=Keyboard shortcut command url > Keyboard shortcut=(here you'll click on the box and push your mute button) > command/url settings > enter the command "amixer set Master toggle" without the quotation marks

The issue with mute is that it'll mute pulseaudio and alsa, but it'll only unmute alsa. This command successfully toggles both.

Well that's what worked for me. Hopefully there's a better way at some point for ootb functionality. It looks like this bug only affects some users.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,535

Website

Re: Laptop volume keys workaround

Thanks for that valuable tips. We will check them, if they could be useful for some Q4OS improvements and fixes.