[pulseaudio-discuss] Automatic muting of multiple applications

[Johannes H. Jensen]

Greetings!

On some systems, e.g. Android, when there are multiple applications
playing sound, the most recently started app gets precedence and the
other apps are muted/paused. For example, if the music player is
running and I open a video, the music player is paused automatically
to make room for the video's sound.

I find this quite convenient and would love if my computer behaved
similarly. In addition it would be even nicer if the music was
automatically restored when the video is stopped again.

There's a project called "Ear Candy" which implements similar
functionality. It's a stand-alone python app which fades the volume of
applications in and out based on certain criteria. Unfortunately it
doesn't seem to be active anymore, and the author notes that the
functionality should ideally be added to PulseAudio.

So my question is, would people be interested in such a feature in
PulseAudio, probably as a module? Do you see any apparent problems
with having this functionality?


Best regards,

Johannes