Volumouse is a free memory resident program that provides easy system volume control through combinations of mouse wheel and keyboard shortcuts.
Imagine the ability to, say, press CTRL on your keyboard and use the mouse wheel to quickly increase/decrease your system’s volume.
Another hotkey (ALT for example) might allow you to flick the mousewheel to quickly mute/unmute, while pressing, say, the scroll mouse button itself and then rolling it up and down might increase/decrease the external mic volume only, etc.
This is precisely what Volumouse does; here are some other points of note:
- You can define up to 5 different actions that invoke mouse wheel volume controls with Volumouse.
- Aside from hotkeys, combination controls include optionally using the mouse scroll wheel while mousing over the taskbar, desktop, or titlebar.
- Volumouse can also optionally invoke scroll wheel volume controls whenever Windows Media Player or BS Player are in focus. Strangely, it does not allow you to define a custom application/media player that would do this as well.
- Trackbar: Volumouse displays a trackbar that displays a volume control slider. This is completely configurable in terms of size, location on screen, etc. (in fact configurable individually for each of the 5 actions that you can program using Volumouse).
- Volumouse allows you to define the ’gradations’ used in your mouse wheel volume manipulations, ranging from a value of 500 to 8000 across 500 point increments.
- Channels: each of the Volumouse controls can be applied to volume in general (all channels), the right channel or left channel.
- Volume control components: aside from volume control, you can use Volumouse to control Wave, SW Synth, CD Player, External Mic, Phone, Auxiliary, Line In, HeadPhones, Recording Control, Analog Source volumes.
- Other controls: how about controlling Window Transparency or Screen Brightness? Yes, Volumouse can do that as well.
How this program can be made even better: 2 quick ideas; the ability to set default volume settings for user-defined applications, and the ability to define apps that would trigger Volumouse controls when in focus as mentioned above. The verdict: simply a wonderful program that works really well. Easily configurable and takes only 3 megs of memory. Version tested: 1.3.1 Compatibility: 32-bit Windows operating system: Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP. (Windows 95 is not supported). There is a beta version that works on VISTA on the program page. Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 76K).
