Windows-Audio-Output-Switcher ~ Audio Device Switch


A small, self-contained tray utility for Windows that lets you cycle through your audio playback devices with a single hotkey, and shows an on-screen overlay telling you which one is now active.

It’s a single ~4 MB .exe with no installation dependencies, no admin rights required, and nothing running except while you’re logged in.

What it does:

  • Cycles the default playback device. Press Win+A (the default hotkey, changeable), left-click the tray icon, or pick a device from the right-click menu, and Windows’ default audio output moves to the next active playback device in the list, wrapping back to the first one after the last. It takes effect for every application immediately — the same as changing it by hand in the Windows sound settings.
  • Win+A actually works for this, even though Windows normally reserves it for Quick Settings (same goes for any other reserved combo you configure it to instead). See how.
  • Shows an on-screen overlay on every switch — styled after Windows’ own volume/brightness OSD, not a toast notification — naming the device that is now active, so you get instant confirmation of what you just switched to. A burst of rapid switches only ever shows the latest one.
  • Lives in the system tray:
    • Left-click the tray icon to switch to the next output device.
    • Hovering it shows the app version and the currently active device.
    • Right-click opens a menu listing every currently active output device — click one to switch to it directly (the active one is checked) — followed by Configure and Exit.

github.com/SpikePy/Windows-Audio-Output-Switcher

Security note: The Win+A hotkey requires a Windows low-level keyboard hook, which can receive system-wide keyboard events. The author says the program only checks for the configured hotkey and does not record or transmit keystrokes. Because this technique can also be used by keyloggers, security software may flag the executable heuristically.

AudioSwitch ~ Taskbar Volume & I/O Switch


Switch between default audio input or output + change volume.

github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch

www.facebook.com/AudioSwitchSoftware

SAR ~ Synchronous Audio Router


Synchronous Audio Router lets you route audio from any Windows application through a DAW (digital audio workstation) application, giving you an immense amount of control over your system’s audio. You can apply sophisticated effects, routing and switching, and combine the audio streams from each individual application any way you want, producing any number of output mixes.

If your applications of choice doesn’t let you select an audio device, SAR has you covered: you can define per-application routing rules which will override the Windows default audio device settings. You can even use pattern matching to define rules for groups of applications.

It’s also fast. SAR operates inline with your existing ASIO driver, adding no additional buffer latency to your DAW, and uses WaveRT for direct low latency transport of audio between applications. This is in contrast to many other “virtual audio cable” type drivers which often require buffer sizes as large as 50-100ms to work reliably.

str.rs/sar
github.com/eiz/SynchronousAudioRouter

Avoid sar.audio (site was hijacked)

SoundSwitch ~ Multilanguage Windows Utility


SoundSwitch offers you the opportunity to switch your playback devices and/or recording devices using simple hotkeys.

No more navigating through several menus and screens. Just configure SoundSwitch once – and you are able to switch between your devices as fast as never before!

soundswitch

soundswitch.aaflalo.me
github.com/Belphemur/SoundSwitch