SoundBar

A sleek, customisable, and powerful audio mixer overlay for Windows, built natively with the Windows App SDK (WinUI 3).

Jump to: How to Install?

How it looks!

Features

Core Audio Control

• Individual App Control: Granular volume control over every active application on your PC.
• Master Volume: Command your entire system's audio from one slider.
• Output Device Switching: Seamlessly change your default Windows playback device directly from the overlay.
• Global Media Controls: Convenient buttons at the bottom of the app to play, pause, skip, and mute system audio.
• Music Player Mode: A beautiful, full-sized music player view that pulls in album artwork and provides a scrubbable timeline for the currently playing song.

Mobile Companion App

• Remote Control: Control your PC's audio mixer, media playback, and output devices directly from your smartphone or tablet over your local network.
• Progressive Web App (PWA): Install the companion directly onto your phone's home screen for a native app experience.
• Real-Time Sync: Volume and media state instantly synchronise between your PC and mobile device.
• Secure Pairing: Connect safely via a rotating 4-digit security code and dynamic QR code generation.

Personalisation & UI

• Light & Dark Themes: Fully supports Windows 11 native light, dark, and system themes, letting you customise the look to your exact preference.
• Custom Backgrounds: Drop any .jpg or .png into your backgrounds folder to deeply personalise the UI with an edge-to-edge frosted wallpaper.
• Smart Dimming: Background dimming elegantly shifts to ensure text remains perfectly readable whether you use Light or Dark mode.
• App Nicknaming: Give your apps custom, friendly names just by clicking on them.

Advanced Features

• Customisable Hotkeys: Focused on a game or meeting? Quickly adjust your focused application's volume with custom global hotkeys!
• App Blacklist: Hide specific applications from your mixer interface to reduce clutter.
• Background Audio Controls: Automatically captures invisible background services and allows you to optionally expose and control them.
• Hearing Protection: An optional excessive loudness warning helps protect your ears if the volume stays high for an extended period.
• Do Not Disturb: A one-click toggle to mute all system notification sounds when you need peace and quiet.
• Always-on-Top & Start at Login: Pin the SoundBar overlay above all other windows, and optionally have it run quietly in the background when your PC starts up.

Convenience

• Automated Updates: The app will periodically check GitHub for updates and notify you when a new release is available with a neat, 1-click update button.
• Modern WinUI 3 Design: Built natively with the Windows App SDK for a sleek interface with smooth, responsive controls.

How to Install?

Option 1: Install via Winget (Recommended)

You can easily install SoundBar using the Windows Package Manager (Winget). Open your command prompt or PowerShell and run:

winget install levon2805.SoundBar

Option 2: Portable Download

The application is also built as a completely self-contained, portable .exe. You do not need to install anything or download the Windows App SDK runtime!

1. Go to the Releases tab on the right side of this GitHub repository.
2. Download the latest SoundBar.zip file.
3. Extract the folder anywhere on your computer.
4. Double-click SoundBar.exe to run the app!

Note on Windows SmartScreen: Because this is a new open-source application, Windows may show a "Windows protected your PC" warning when you first run the app. This is completely normal for new independent software. To run the app, simply click "More info" and then "Run anyway".

Development Setup

Structure:

• src/SoundBar/ contains the main WinUI 3 application.
• tests/SoundBar.Tests/ contains the xUnit automated tests.
• ReleaseTools/ contains internal deployment utilities.

Open SoundBar.slnx or src/SoundBar/SoundBar.csproj in Visual Studio 2022 to get started.

Running Automated Tests

We use xUnit and Moq to test our internal services and debouncing logic.

Note: If you encounter ExpandPriContent MSBuild errors when attempting to run dotnet test from the command line, this is a known environmental quirk with the Windows App SDK preview tooling.

To run tests reliably: Open the solution in Visual Studio 2022 and use the built-in Test Explorer (Test > Test Explorer > Run All Tests).