When using my computer I often use my speakers when listening to music, watching movies, or coding something up. As a first-person shooter fan, I usually want to use headphones so I can use the mic to coordinate play with the other live players and not completely bother the rest of the people in the house with gunfire, explosions, and ‘colorful language’.

Switching between audio output devices on Windows systems usually requires no less than:

1. Right-click on speaker tray icon
2. Left click on playback devices
3. Right click on device you want to be the default output device in Sound selector
4. Left click on ‘Set as Default Device’

Fun! Not. Even worse is that many times I click on the game I want to play only to realize I forgot to switch audio devices.  In many games, alt-tabbing out and switching the default audio device doesn’t actually change the in-game playback device.  You have to exit the game and restart.  Annoying.

What I want is a taskbar icon I can simply double-click to switch between headphones and speakers – or any of my many audio devices really.  So to that end, I wrote up an app that does exactly that.  You simply select which devices you want to toggle between (any number) and double-clicking the tray icon simply toggles you to the very next device.

Or, you can right-click on the icon and select the device directly with a single click.

Give it a try.

Click here to download a copy.

The MSI installer is in the source directory.  Even better is that I’ve put the code up on Google Code and it’s open-source under the BSD license.

Drop a line if you found it handy or have suggestions!