Better Volume/Sound Control For Windows With Volume2

Changing the volume in Windows isn’t a difficult task, to be sure.  Click the volume control icon in the System Tray, wait for the volume indicator to appear, then drag it up or down.  And if your computer has multimedia keys, you likely have volume up and down buttons (and probably a mute button as well), which will also accomplish the task for you.  If you want a few more features, a great utility called Volume2 is worth a look.  What is Volume2 and what can it do?  Here’s a blurb directly from the website:

“Volume2 is an advanced Windows audio mixer, a complete replacement for the standard Volume Control. This application lets you easily change the sound volume just by rotating the mouse wheel or by using keyboard hot keys or just mouse move on screen border. It includes an audio mixer with advanced volume controls support, a scheduler, an on-screen display, command line support, the ability to store and recall different unlimited presets via one mouse click or system-wide hot keys.”

Sounds good, and as it turns out, Volume2 is pretty nice in action as well.  Here’s how to use it.  The first step is to head over to the Volume2 website, located here:

Once there, click the Downloads link (it’s underlined, near the top of the page).  Then, choose the download link that suits your system.

You’ll then download a zipped file, which will need to be extracted.

Once extracted, simply run the installer.

Once the installer finishes, Volume2 will be launched, and a new icon will appear in the System Tray.  You’ll also get an optional pop-up bubble when your volume changes.  And as an added feature, simply place your mouse against the edge of the screen (the left side by defaul, although we’ve switched to the right side for the following screenshot), then move your mouse up or down to control the volume.

To tweak that behavior, simply choose the Screen Edge settings from the Volume2 Options window, accessible by selecting it from the System Tray icon’s right-click menu.

Also in the Options pane is a section called OSD.  From here, you’ll be able to choose themes for the optional OSD (on screen display), that represents volume changes.

Here is one of the available themes (there are well over a dozen available).

One of the big advantages Volume2 has to offer is its customizability.  In addition to the System Tray icon, screen edge volume control and OSD options, you can control the volume from the keyboard or mouse, schedule volume changes and more, all from the Options pane.

Volume2 is certainly not a necessity.  You can already control the volume quite easily in a number of different ways in Windows.  The difference with Volume2 is that now you can more easily customize how you control the volume, and do so in style.