swob (sway+wob helper)

This is a simple/stupid helper script and config files to provide volume and brightness controls under Wayland using wob. Sway is not mandatory (the helper script doesn't depend on sway or any wlroots features); the name is simply because sway was the first compositor I configured this for. Other compositor configurations are available; see §Installation.

Calling wob from a script or config file is not too intuitive, because it panics if the process it's reading from hangs up. The helper script ensures that there is a process keeping wob open for a few seconds to allow it to time out, and potentially respond without invoking a whole new wob instance on successive taps of the volume/brightness controls, especially with pauses between. It doesn't go the way of keeping an always-open wob instance, instead trying to balance invoking as needed with not starting a whole new binary unnecessarily with every tap.

Dependencies

POSIX sh, sed and mkfifo(1); non-POSIX mktemp(1) (all pretty universally available)
wob
brightnessctl
For volume, at least one of:
amixer, for ALSA
wireplumber and wpctl for pipewire
pactl for PulseAudio
- As with anything pertaining to Poettering, pactl doesn't play nice, so the pactl backend is the slowest of the three: requires three calls to pactl and two to sed, compared with two calls to wpctl and one to amixer (each with only one call to sed). It is generally recommended to use one of the other two wherever possible

Installation

Configure your wayland compositor to bind the XF86 volume/brightness controls to swob.sh. Example configuration is provided for the following:

Sway (options):

Copy the sway config snippet into your own sway config file...

Or source it from that file...

Or copy it into /etc/sway/config.d

dwl:

An example patch for config.h is available at dwl-config.h.patch
Put swob.sh on your PATH, or set your wayland compositor's config to point to its absolute location.

Environment variables

You can set the SWOB_MAX_VOLUME environment variable to set the maximum volume.

# Your Sway config

set $SWOB_MAX_VOLUME 120

bindsym --locked XF86AudioLowerVolume exec exec env SWOB_MAX_VOLUME=$SWOB_MAX_VOLUME swob.sh volume 5%-
bindsym --locked XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec exec env SWOB_MAX_VOLUME=$SWOB_MAX_VOLUME swob.sh volume 5%+

Theming

For wob styling when the value is above the threshold, there are styles: overflow_bar_color, overflow_background_color, overflow_border_color.

[style.mute]
background_color = af0000
background_color = af0000
overflow_bar_color = FF5555
overflow_border_color = 000000

Copying

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the full GPL can be found at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/GPL.