Audio Device Switcher with Win11 Style FlyOvers
A lightweight Windows tray utility that shows a native-feeling flyout whenever your default audio output device changes — and lets you switch between your favourite outputs with a single hotkey.
Windows tells you almost nothing when your audio output changes. Plug in headphones, wake a Bluetooth speaker, or switch to your monitor over HDMI, and the only way to know where the sound actually went is to open the volume flyout and look.
Audio Switch Notifier fills that gap with a small acrylic toast that slides up from the taskbar, shows you the device that just became active, and gets out of the way.
- Win11-style flyout — acrylic blur, rounded corners, and a slide-in animation from the taskbar edge, styled to sit alongside Windows' own volume OSD rather than fight it
- Automatically yields — if you adjust the volume while the toast is up, it dismisses itself so it never covers Windows' volume flyout
- Six screen positions — pick any corner or the top/bottom centre with a visual, monitor-shaped picker
- Adjustable duration — 1.5 to 8 seconds
- Adjustable background opacity — 0–100% acrylic tint
- Follows your system theme — light and dark are both handled, and the toast repaints when you toggle Windows' theme
- Nicknames — rename
Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)toDesk Speakers - Per-device icons — choose from speaker, headphones, monitor, TV, Bluetooth, USB, or a generic fallback
- Remembers disconnected devices — settings for a device you've unplugged are kept and clearly marked, so nothing is lost when you plug it back in
- Global hotkey — assign any
Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Wincombination to cycle the default output device - Choose what's in the rotation — tick only the devices you actually switch between, so the hotkey skips virtual and rarely used endpoints
- Optional audio cue when the output changes — off by default
- Custom sound file (
.wav,.mp3,.wma) or the default system sound - Configurable start delay (0–1500 ms) — USB, HDMI, and Bluetooth devices aren't rendering the instant Windows reports the switch, so a short delay stops the sound clipping on slow-to-wake hardware
- Live tray icon that reflects the icon assigned to the current output device
- Theme-aware — repaints for light and dark taskbars, and renders crisply at any display scaling
- Double-click to open settings, right-click for the menu
- Start with Windows — optional, off by default
- Single instance — launching it again focuses the existing one instead of stacking
Download the latest AudioSwitchNotifier.exe from the
Releases page and run it. That's it.
The release build is self-contained — the .NET runtime is bundled inside the executable, so there is nothing to install first. It lives in your system tray; there is no installer and no background service.
Requirements: Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
On first launch Windows 11 hides tray icons it hasn't seen before. If you don't see it, click the
^chevron on the taskbar. To pin it permanently: Taskbar settings → Other system tray icons → Audio Switch Notifier → On.
Requires the .NET 8 SDK.
# Debug build
dotnet build
# Self-contained single-file release
dotnet publish -p:PublishProfile=SingleFileThe published executable is written to publish/AudioSwitchNotifier.exe.
Note that PublishTrimmed is deliberately left off in the publish profile — WPF is not
trim-compatible, and enabling it produces a build that succeeds and then fails at runtime
when XAML reflects over a trimmed type.
Settings are stored as JSON in your user profile and are written when you press Save. Removing a device from the Audio Outputs tab deletes its saved nickname and icon.
C# / .NET 8 / WPF, talking to the Windows Core Audio APIs (IMMDeviceEnumerator,
IAudioEndpointVolume) via COM interop, with SetWindowCompositionAttribute and
DwmSetWindowAttribute for the acrylic and rounded-corner treatment.
| H.NotifyIcon.Wpf | Tray icon |
| WPF-UI | Fluent controls and theming |
| Fluent System Icons | Device icon glyphs |
Sound wave icons created by Ahmad Yafie - Flaticon
Used under the Flaticon licence, which requires this attribution. If you fork this project and keep the icon, please keep the credit with it.
This application was designed and built with Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant. The architecture, implementation, and this README were produced in collaboration with Claude Code. Attribution is also shown in the app's About tab.
MIT — do what you like with the code, keep the copyright notice.
The application icon is not covered by the MIT licence; it is used under the Flaticon licence and must keep its attribution. See Credits above.