No volume control: Applications no longer appear in PulseAudio Volume Control

opt4951 · Aug 1, 2025

After a pkg update (300+ packages), applications no longer appear in PulseAudio Volume Control. This is a problem because PAVC is where I also switch output destinations for an application, so if I wanted to listen to VLC via my headphones, I would change the output destination in PAVC. So I cannot change the volume per application nor the output destination per application. I'm running FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p1, XFCE 14.20 and Nvidia 570.169 driver.

This problem affects Firefox, VLC and Chrome(Linux chroot).

Is there a way to fix this or is there another app that gives me the same control as PAVC?

Thanks for any help in advance.

opt4951 · Aug 10, 2025

I did not find anything that helped resolve this issue. The work around I found was to create helper scripts that changed the default output device on execution. This will do for now. Hopefully, the functionality will return in a subsequent upgrade.

Maturin · Aug 11, 2025

opt4951 said:
After a pkg update

...

opt4951 said:
I'm running FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p1

-p2 is out.
I recommend you update FreeBSD (install the latest patches), retry, and then tell if this solved your issues, or not.

opt4951 · Aug 14, 2025

I did upgrade to -p2, it did not solve the issue.

fmc000 · Aug 14, 2025

Is pulseaudio running?

nxjoseph · Aug 14, 2025

Does it work after commands below?

Code:

pulseaudio -k
pulseaudio -D

Then run pavucontrol.

opt4951 · Aug 15, 2025

This is the output of this commands:

 

kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio --check

W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support.

kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio -k

W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support.

E: [] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process

kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio -D

W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support.

kwill@upsilon:~ $

nxjoseph · Aug 15, 2025

opt4951 said:
This is the output of this commands:
kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio --check W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support. kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio -k W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support. E: [] main.c: Failed to kill daemon: No such process kwill@upsilon:~ $ pulseaudio -D W: [] caps.c: Normally all extra capabilities would be dropped now, but that's impossible because PulseAudio was built without capabilities support. kwill@upsilon:~ $

After starting the pulseaudio daemon, did you try pavucontrol again?

opt4951 · Aug 16, 2025

Yes I did, same results, no applications show up in the playback tab.

fmc000 · Aug 16, 2025

fmc000 said:
Is pulseaudio running?

I reiterate my question.

opt4951 · Aug 24, 2025

fmc000 said:
I reiterate my question.

Yes, PulseAudio is running...

But I think I found an explanation at least...

I have Chrome loaded in a Linux jail so I can watch Netflix, Hulu, etc. on FreeBSD.
The PulseAudio app just happened to be open when I started Chrome to watch Netflix... it showed up immediately in the app.
So it seems when the PulseAudio was recompiled -- they somehow dropped compatibility with FreeBSD apps or at least the VPC function. Can this be fixed?

recluce · Sep 26, 2025

I found it best so far to completely avoid Pulseaudio, as I had nothing but trouble with it. This limits your choice of desktop environment (MATE does not need it, for example), but applications like Firefox or Chromium work well with OSS or sndio. If you want to stay within the "Linux-like" sound server world, time to move on to Pipewire?

opt4951 · Oct 12, 2025

recluce, I would if I could. I'd rather use OSS than Pulseaudio, but the Pulseaudio volume control gave me the option to control volume per application. I do not know of another program that does that. If that program exists, I would happily abandon Pulseaudio and use it instead. At this moment in time, I'm not using it anyway because that feature was disabled on the last update which is what my original post was about.

froggit9000 · Wednesday at 9:20 PM

I'm running 14.3-RELEASE-p2 with the XFCE 4.20 DE and it seems pulseaudio is running.
I noticed that there was no widget to control the volume but in the XFCE keyboard shortcuts I mapped keys for volume up and down, which run pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +10% for volume up 10%, and pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -10% for volume down 10%, plus pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle for toggling mute.

recluce · Thursday at 5:07 PM

froggit9000: is audio/xfce4-mixer installed (perhaps reinstall it)? You should then be able to add the volume control applet to the panel.

froggit9000 · Friday at 12:36 AM

recluce said:
froggit9000: is audio/xfce4-mixer installed (perhaps reinstall it)? You should then be able to add the volume control applet to the panel.

I had a quick look for a package for this and this is what I found:

Code:

# pkg search xfce4-mixer
xfce4-mixer-4.20.0             Volume control for the Xfce desktop
xfce4-mixer-full-4.20.0        Volume control for the Xfce desktop

I guess the one with 'full' in the package name may work, so I thought, so I installed it:

Code:

# pkg install xfce4-mixer-full-4.20.0
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 2 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
	keybinder-gtk3: 0.3.2_3 [FreeBSD]
	xfce4-mixer-full: 4.20.0 [FreeBSD]

Number of packages to be installed: 2

151 KiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[1/2] Fetching xfce4-mixer-full-4.20.0.pkg: 100%  130 KiB 133.5kB/s    00:01    
[2/2] Fetching keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3.pkg: 100%   21 KiB  21.6kB/s    00:01    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[1/2] Installing keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3...
[1/2] Extracting keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3: 100%
[2/2] Installing xfce4-mixer-full-4.20.0...
[2/2] Extracting xfce4-mixer-full-4.20.0: 100%
==> Running trigger: desktop-file-utils.ucl
Building cache database of MIME types
=====
Message from keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3:

--
===>   NOTICE:

The keybinder-gtk3 port currently does not have a maintainer. As a result, it is
more likely to have unresolved issues, not be up-to-date, or even be removed in
the future. To volunteer to maintain this port, please create an issue at:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla

More information about port maintainership is available at:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/contributing/#ports-contributing
#

I then added the 'audio mixer' widget to the XFCE panel but if you hover the mouse over the widget the popup text says 'No valid device and/or element'. The widget appears as a speaker icon but has a bar through it showing it is inoperational/muted perhaps, but if you click on the speaker widget you can slide the slider up and down but it has no effect on the volume when playing audio. Also if you right-click on the speaker widget and select 'properties' a dialog window appears with the message 'GStreamer was unable to detect any sound devices. Some sound system specific GStreamer packages may be missing. It may also be a permissions problem.'

So that doesn't work. The question is, will the port be any different?

I will uninstall the packages it installed. What do you think?

froggit9000 · Friday at 12:49 AM

recluce said:
froggit9000: is audio/xfce4-mixer installed (perhaps reinstall it)? You should then be able to add the volume control applet to the panel.

Ha, I got it working now!
Here is the log:

Code:

# pkg install xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
FreeBSD repository is up to date.
Updating FreeBSD-kmods repository catalogue...
FreeBSD-kmods repository is up to date.
All repositories are up to date.
The following 9 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
	cairomm11: 1.18.0 [FreeBSD]
	glibmm26: 2.84.0 [FreeBSD]
	gtkmm40: 4.18.0 [FreeBSD]
	keybinder-gtk3: 0.3.2_3 [FreeBSD]
	libcanberra: 0.30_12 [FreeBSD]
	libsigc++30: 3.6.0 [FreeBSD]
	pangomm24: 2.56.1 [FreeBSD]
	pavucontrol: 6.1 [FreeBSD]
	xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin: 0.5.1 [FreeBSD]

Number of packages to be installed: 9

The process will require 20 MiB more space.
3 MiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: y
[1/8] Fetching xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.5.1.pkg: 100%  113 KiB 115.3kB/s    00:01    
[2/8] Fetching cairomm11-1.18.0.pkg: 100%   91 KiB  93.1kB/s    00:01    
[3/8] Fetching libcanberra-0.30_12.pkg: 100%   44 KiB  45.2kB/s    00:01    
[4/8] Fetching pavucontrol-6.1.pkg: 100%  189 KiB 193.1kB/s    00:01    
[5/8] Fetching glibmm26-2.84.0.pkg: 100%    1 MiB   1.1MB/s    00:01    
[6/8] Fetching gtkmm40-4.18.0.pkg: 100%    2 MiB   1.7MB/s    00:01    
[7/8] Fetching libsigc++30-3.6.0.pkg: 100%   49 KiB  50.6kB/s    00:01    
[8/8] Fetching pangomm24-2.56.1.pkg: 100%  120 KiB 123.1kB/s    00:01    
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
[1/9] Installing keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3...
[1/9] Extracting keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3: 100%
[2/9] Installing libcanberra-0.30_12...
[2/9] Extracting libcanberra-0.30_12: 100%
[3/9] Installing libsigc++30-3.6.0...
[3/9] Extracting libsigc++30-3.6.0: 100%
[4/9] Installing cairomm11-1.18.0...
[4/9] Extracting cairomm11-1.18.0: 100%
[5/9] Installing glibmm26-2.84.0...
[5/9] Extracting glibmm26-2.84.0: 100%
[6/9] Installing pangomm24-2.56.1...
[6/9] Extracting pangomm24-2.56.1: 100%
[7/9] Installing gtkmm40-4.18.0...
[7/9] Extracting gtkmm40-4.18.0: 100%
[8/9] Installing pavucontrol-6.1...
[8/9] Extracting pavucontrol-6.1: 100%
[9/9] Installing xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.5.1...
[9/9] Extracting xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin-0.5.1: 100%
==> Running trigger: desktop-file-utils.ucl
Building cache database of MIME types
==> Running trigger: gtk-update-icon-cache.ucl
Generating GTK icon cache for /usr/local/share/icons/hicolor
=====
Message from keybinder-gtk3-0.3.2_3:

--
===>   NOTICE:

The keybinder-gtk3 port currently does not have a maintainer. As a result, it is
more likely to have unresolved issues, not be up-to-date, or even be removed in
the future. To volunteer to maintain this port, please create an issue at:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla

More information about port maintainership is available at:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/contributing/#ports-contributing

Then I added the 'PulseAudio Plugin' widget to the panel. You can click on the speaker widget on the panel and change the volume.

My existing keybindings still work the same, as I described above, but now I can also use the mouse on the volume/speaker widget from the XFCE panel. I don't know if this fixes the issue for the OP or not though.

opt4951 Does this work for you?