Switching between builtin speakers and headphones in the command line

Librem
1

In most devices attaching the headphones into the device would immediately set the headphones as the audio output device. Same with pulling the headphones out - the output device would be set to the builtin speakers.

In Librem14, as far as I can tell, one has to switch output devices manually in Settings → Sound → Output → Output Device.

I personally find this default behavior of Librem14 to be great, but it would be even better if I could attach it to a keybinding, and for that I need a command to run in a shell script.

What’s the command that switches between audio devices?

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2

The following commands will set the output device to headphones and speakers:

pactl set-sink-port alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo analog-output-headphones

pactl set-sink-port alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo analog-output-speaker

if these exact names do not fit your case, you can use tab-completion to see a list of possibilities.

3

Here is a dumb looking Python script I wrote:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE


def get_current_active_port() -> str:
    pactl_list_sinks = Popen(["pactl", "list", "sinks"], stdout=PIPE)

    output, stderr = pactl_list_sinks.communicate()

    current_active_port = [
        line.split(": ")[1].strip()
        for line in output.decode().split("\n")
        if "Active Port:" in line
    ][0]

    return current_active_port


def main() -> None:
    current_active_port = get_current_active_port()
    print("Current active port:", current_active_port)

    if current_active_port == "analog-output-headphones":
        Popen(
            [
                "pactl",
                "set-sink-port",
                "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo",
                "analog-output-speaker",
            ]
        ).wait()
    elif current_active_port == "analog-output-speaker":
        Popen(
            [
                "pactl",
                "set-sink-port",
                "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.analog-stereo",
                "analog-output-headphones",
            ]
        ).wait()

    current_active_port = get_current_active_port()
    print("New current active port:", current_active_port)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
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