There is muting via reducing the volume to 0%
And there’s muting via pressing the mute button (Ex: Fn+F1)
Which means that the unmute button will appear to not function when it’s at 0% volume, which is an UI issue.
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Yeah, at one point I did find this weird. Looking at existing icons, I don’t see one that is completely grayed out. Maybe reduced to 0% could be grayed, in line with the current graying per audio level, and the muted could be the existing crossed out
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And to the part about knowing the volume on unmute, the separate levels each could have a crossed out version
I think it’s not (only) the icon, but also the text which is the problem. When I manually set the volume to 0% the display switches to “muted”. This might seem logical at first but gets confusing when you add the actual mute function, either through a media button or middle clicking the tray icon.
I think it would be helpful if the volume control just showed up as “0%” if volume was turned down and only muted if the actual mute function was used. This would be more helpful than just an additional icon (which the casual user might not understand or even notice)
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Yeah, then I guess the popup in the middle of the screen also should display 0%, as well as the hover tooltip. Also in the tray menu itself it shouldn’t set it to muted automatically (showing the button as pressed), when scrolled down
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if you unmute via the button, the volume setting returns to where ever the slider is positioned.
if your slider is positioned to 0%, then that is the volume you have selected.
there would be no other way for the UI to know what volume you were expecting when you unmute using the button.
if the behavior you want is for the unmute via the button to restore sound to your preferred listening level, then don’t use the slider to mute the sound, just use the button.
in any case, i don’t see what benefit there is to having two separate icons, when no matter which way you choose to mute the result is the same, no audio.
I think you need to re-read this thread to fully understand this request. It’s not an illogical request, and it does help with differentiation.
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Or maybe we don’t need to make distinction between “mute all” and “master volume 0%” when there is only one active output device, which is the most common case. I.e., “increase volume” (maybe also “decrease volume”) always unmute. “Decrease volume” to 0% also mutes. Unmuting also increases volume when it’s at 0%.
Except it doesn’t, which is the core problem. If you manually set the volume to 0%, the actual mute/unmute action will just continuously announce “Audio muted”. And you can’t arbitrarily select a volume level for the user because you don’t know what kind of amplifier sits behind the actual hardware. That’s why a distinction between 0% Volume and actual mute state would make a lot of sense.
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what i’ve read is that there is a desire to know what the volume will be when unmute is requested.
the best way to do that is to open the volume control at look at where it is set.
if you request an unmute it will return to the last volume that was set, be it 0% or 150%.
the only way to prevent that sort of user error is to put in an extra “are you sure y/n” step which i’m sure everyone would universally hate.
i could get behind changing the tooltip when on hover to show you the preset volume AND the muted status instead of just one or the other so that the user has the info they need on hover without having to open the widget.
changing the icon seems like it would just generate clutter in the system tray.
Yeah, nah. You don’t understand the request. It’s not something that bothers me, but I can see the need for it. Anyway, let me try to simplify.
Icon at 67-100% = All the bars are shown
Icon below 67% = Only one (or two depending on theme) is shown
Icon at 0% (not muted) = Slash over the icon (and probably grayed out)
Icon when muted = RED icon with slash over the icon (or some other clear indication)
The feature being requested technically already exists since different volume levels have different icons. This would be an additional icon that seamlessly replaces the mute icon with a 0% icon the same way volume levels do.
It would also be similar to the RED icon that shows up when your microphone is being recorded by OBS or other apps.
And, like it’s been said, when the volume is turned down to 0% (not muted), pressing mute/unmute on your keyboard or other device several times will only change from a muted state to 0%. So, if a user doesn’t realize, it may take a while for them to actually go and hover their mouse over the icon to see why they still can’t hear anything. Whereas, with a distinct icon, they can immediately tell without needing to either hover or click on any settings dropdown.
this seem like it would break a lot of themes, but i don’t use themes (just breeze) so i have no dog in that fight.
however i do have an issues with these arbitrary cutoff points as for me the difference between 15% and 25% is the difference between me being able to hear the content and waking up the house when a tiktok video ends.
so how does one make that configurable to suite different listening levels and equipment.
seems doomed to be “wrong” no matter what, which brings me back to my point that it’s up to the user to know what their volume level set to before they unmute.
This is merely a visual design system used by quite literally all OSes. When the volume gets to a certain level, the icon changes. There are some apps/websites that literally change percent-by-percent, but most things use a range. You can find it in Breeze. There are different icons for different ranges. See image below. Some don’t show the thumbnail, but read the file names.
PS: Not just “replace” but rather using a specific icon when the volume is at 0% (like the current mute icon), while using a different, more distinct icon for mute.
i guess i never noticed the wi-fi like status change from 25% to 30% and 65% to 70% by adding the “bar” since i rarely need more than 25% volume.
so if the volume is a 30% and the first “bar” is showing, when mute using the button the icon changes to muted but the bar disappears because there is only one muted icon.
what this proposal would do is change it so that the level “bar” remains even with the addition of the mute symbol (slash), which would mean a whole new round of icons with “mute” overlay applied to them… and we sill have the problem of granularity not being well suited to everyone’s needs with only three normal states to indicate volume level.
this leads back to some sort of % badge on the icon regardless of mute status ala the number of open apps in a group in the task manager, kind of thing and only have two icons, muted and not muted, both of which continuously show the % badge.
that would solve all this issues at the expense of more clutter and a more complex code base.
in my mind the tile of this thread does not fully reflect the need/desire.
The levels (25%, 30%, 67%, etc.) are not something I can confidently say I know the exact level at which each distro, DE, tray icon, etc. changes the look of the icon. I’m not sure what manages this, and it is unimportant when related to a muted state.
I was just giving you an example of a system that is already in place and can be used.
No. It would not mean that. It would be one new mute icon that, when unmuted, would show a regular volume icon based on the current volume level.
There wouldn’t need to be several mute icons for different volume levels. Just one distinct mute icon (preferably red) and a distinct 0% icon (grayed out without a slash).
but that’s what we have now.
i thought the whole point was to know what the volume level was going to be when you unmute… the current icon sets don’t show that, and neither does the hover tool tip.
how are you supposed to know how loud it will be if you unmute the red icon?
isn’t that the affordance we are looking for here? So we don’t blast our sleeping families or damage our hearing wearing headphones?
and if you say you can just check that in the audio widget i’m going to lose it 
I decided to read the details of the feature request after all this back and forth 
. Shame on me for not doing so from the start. Especially after:
In any case, I have never seen an icon theme with a number on it for the volume levels. I was thinking it would be a request that even I could apply manually by just editing which icon shows for muted and which shows for 0%.
Now I see that the whole system would need to be redone to implement this. It would essentially need to work similarly to the way a battery icon works.
I see why no one picked it up since it was requested.
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no worries… UX design is hard.
my tool tip suggestion still holds water, if you ask me
with it, you can tell the volume level regardless of the mute status and without having to unmute or open the widget to see the slider and it would not require more complicated icon sets.
so the tool tip on hover would say instead of just
Audio Muted
or
Volume at xx%
it would indicate BOTH states
Volume at xx% (MUTED)
so the user would know if they unmute that the volume would be set to xx%
THEN if you wanted to have a different icon for mute by 0% (gray) and mute by button (red) to alert the user that one is safe to unmute and the other is not, then at least they have an easy way see just how unsafe it would be to unmute.
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