Audio Switcher

A tiny Windows tray app for switching your sound output (speakers, headphones, monitor, TV…) with a click or a keyboard shortcut.

• Lives in the system tray, with no window and no installer
• Click the icon to see all your output devices and pick one
• Ctrl+Alt+F12 steps to the next device (you can change this)
• Optional hotkeys that jump straight to a specific device
• Middle-click the tray icon to step to the next device too
• Small notification showing which device you switched to
• Follows light/dark taskbar and dark context menus
• "Start with Windows" toggle in the menu
• Single ~2 MB .exe with no dependencies (Windows 10/11, 64-bit)

Getting started

1. Put AudioSwitcher.exe somewhere permanent, e.g. C:\Tools\AudioSwitcher\.
2. Double-click it. A speaker icon appears in the tray (you may need to click the ^ arrow; drag the icon onto the taskbar to keep it visible).
3. Press Ctrl+Alt+F12 to switch outputs, or click the icon to choose one.
4. Turn on Start with Windows from the tray menu if you want it to start with Windows.

The exe isn't code-signed, so the first time you run it Windows SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC". Click More info → Run anyway.

Settings & hotkeys

Choose Edit hotkeys & settings… from the tray menu. This opens %APPDATA%\AudioSwitcher\settings.json in Notepad. Save the file and the changes apply within a few seconds; no restart is needed.

{
  "cycle_hotkey": "Ctrl+Alt+F12",
  "cycle_devices": ["Speakers", "Headphones"],
  "device_hotkeys": {
    "Headphones": "Ctrl+Alt+1",
    "Speakers": "Ctrl+Alt+2"
  },
  "show_notifications": true,
  "set_communications_device": true
}

Setting	What it does
cycle_hotkey	Steps to the next output. "" turns it off.
cycle_devices	Which outputs the cycle steps through, in order. Use the device name or just part of it ("Headphones" matches Headphones (Arctis Nova 7)). Leave [] to cycle through all active devices.
device_hotkeys	A hotkey per device that jumps straight to it.
show_notifications	Show a notification when a hotkey switches the output.
set_communications_device	Also switch the default device for calls (Teams, Discord, Zoom…). Set to false if you keep a headset fixed for calls.

Hotkey format: modifiers Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win plus one key, joined with +. Keys can be A–Z, 0–9, F1–F24, Num0–Num9, Space, Insert, Delete, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Up, Down, Left, Right, Pause, ScrollLock, MediaNext, MediaPrev, MediaPlayPause, and punctuation such as -, =, [, ], ;, ', ,, ., /, `.

If a hotkey is already taken by another app, you'll get a notification. Pick a different combination.

The exact device names are listed in the tray menu. They're the same names shown in Windows Sound settings, where you can rename them under Properties.

Tray menu

Device list	Click one to make it the output; the current one has a dot. Its hotkey, if any, is shown on the right.
Switch to next device	Same as the cycle hotkey
Start with Windows	Adds or removes it from your startup apps (current user only)
Edit hotkeys & settings…	Opens settings.json
Windows sound settings…	Opens the classic Playback devices panel
Exit	Closes the app

Building from source

You only need Go 1.22 or newer. There are no third-party modules. It builds on Windows, macOS or Linux:

GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -trimpath -ldflags "-H windowsgui -s -w" -o AudioSwitcher.exe .

On Windows PowerShell:

$env:GOOS="windows"; $env:GOARCH="amd64"
go build -trimpath -ldflags "-H windowsgui -s -w" -o AudioSwitcher.exe .

rsrc_windows_amd64.syso (exe icon, DPI manifest and version info) is committed and linked automatically. To regenerate it after changing app.ico, app.manifest or the version, run ./build.sh, which uses tools/mkres.py (Python 3, standard library only).

How it works

• Devices are listed through the Windows Core Audio MMDevice API.
• The default device is changed through IPolicyConfig. This is the same undocumented COM interface the Windows Sound panel and tools like SoundSwitch use.
• Hotkeys use RegisterHotKey, and the tray icon is plain Shell_NotifyIcon. Everything is pure Go calling Win32 directly.

Files

File	Purpose
main.go	Tray icon, menu, hotkeys, notifications, settings reload
audio.go	Listing devices and switching the default output
hotkey.go	Parses hotkey strings like Ctrl+Alt+F12
config.go	settings.json loading and defaults
winapi.go	Win32 bindings
icons/	Tray icons (light/dark taskbar)