Adjusting a Mac's System Volume on the Command Line

# Adjusting a Mac's System Volume on the Command Line Source: [https://excessivelyadequate.com/posts/vol.html](https://excessivelyadequate.com/posts/vol.html) Because I’m approximately 270 years old and listen to music \(MP3 files, no less\!\) on my*computer*instead of a smart speaker, sometimes I find myself wanting to adjust my Mac’s system volume without needing to, say, get up from the couch\. I’m sure there’s plenty of iOS apps that can do that with varying amounts of tracking and in\-app\-purchases, but because, once again, I’m practically 270 years old, I prefer to[SSH into](https://www.termius.com/ios)my computer and run a command\. Thanks to[AppleScript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript), the amount of trickery required to make this possible is kept to a minimum: Keeping in mind that the built\-in`osascript`utility executes AppleScript code, running… ``` osascript -e "set volume output volume 100" ``` …will turn the volume up to its maximum – the number is interpreted as a percentage\. You can also make things louder or quieter by some percentage points… ``` osascript -e "set volume output volume (output volume of (get volume settings) - 42)" ``` …or \(un\)mute the computer: ``` osascript -e "set volume with output muted" osascript -e "set volume without output muted" ``` But, as you can see, these commands are a bit unintuitive and*a lot*unwieldy\. To provide a better user experience in the “lazy couch potato” use case, I’ve written a few lines of bash that provide fewer\-keystrokes access to these volume controls: ``` #!/bin/bash USAGE="usage: vol [-h | --help | NUMBER_FROM_0_TO_100 | -DECREMENT | +INCREMENT]" # if the argument isn't one of the expected values, display usage instructions if [ "$1" == "-h" ] || [ "$1" == "--help" ] || ! [[ "$1" =~ ^$|^[+-]?[0-9]+$ ]]; then echo "$USAGE" exit 1 fi # retrieve old volume OLD_VOLUME="$(osascript -e "output volume of (get volume settings)")" if [ -z "$1" ]; then echo "$OLD_VOLUME %" else # default case: just set volume to specified value NEW_VOLUME="$1" # alternatively: decrement or increment? if [[ "$1" == -* ]] || [[ "$1" == +* ]]; then NEW_VOLUME=$(($OLD_VOLUME + $1)) fi # clamp to [0, 100] if [ "$NEW_VOLUME" -lt 0 ] ; then NEW_VOLUME=0 fi if [ "$NEW_VOLUME" -gt 100 ] ; then NEW_VOLUME=100 fi # give feedback MUTED="" if [ "$NEW_VOLUME" -eq 0 ]; then MUTED="(muted)" fi echo "$OLD_VOLUME % -> $NEW_VOLUME % $MUTED" # set osascript -e "set volume output volume $NEW_VOLUME" fi ``` You can also[find this script on GitHub](https://github.com/doersino/vol)\. Paste these lines of code into a file named`vol`, place it in a directory that’s on your`$PATH`and make sure the file’s executable: run`chmod u\+x vol`, for instance\. \(A common choice of directory is`~/local/bin`– which you can put on your`$PATH`by adding`export PATH="$HOME/local/bin:$PATH`to your[`\.bashrc`and/or`\.bash\_profile`](https://linuxize.com/post/bashrc-vs-bash-profile/)– but I tend to instead maintain small utilities like this as functions[in my`\.bashrc`](https://github.com/doersino/dotfiles/blob/master/.bashrc)\. To each their own\.\) Here’s how to use the thusly\-created`vol`command: ``` $ vol --help usage: vol [-h | --help | NUMBER_FROM_0_TO_100 | -DECREMENT | +INCREMENT] ``` ``` $ vol 0 26% -> 0% (muted) ``` But wait, there’s more\! ## Controlling your music player from the command line[https://excessivelyadequate.com/posts/vol.html#controlling-your-music-player-from-the-command-line](https://excessivelyadequate.com/posts/vol.html#controlling-your-music-player-from-the-command-line) The first Apple product I every used was iTunes \(on Windows Vista\!\), and I stuck with it until it was rebranded as*Music*\. I then switched to[Swinsian](https://swinsian.com/), a native, fast, minimalist, but fully\-featured music player\. All three applications – iTunes, Music, and Swinsian – support a shared set of AppleScript hooks which the following script makes use of: ``` # select available player, preferring Swinsian over Music over iTunes PLAYER="iTunes" if [ -d "/System/Applications/Music.app" ]; then PLAYER="Music" fi if [ -d "/Applications/Swinsian.app" ]; then PLAYER="Swinsian" fi # do the things if [ -z "$1" ]; then osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to playpause" elif [ "$1" = "?" ]; then osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to get name of current track" printf "\033[90mby \033[0m" osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to get artist of current track" printf "\033[90mon \033[0m" osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to get album of current track" elif [ "$1" = "prev" ]; then osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to play previous track" elif [ "$1" = "next" ]; then osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to play next track" else osascript -e "tell application \"$PLAYER\" to $1" fi ``` As above, paste this code into an executable file – mine’s called`it`, short for*iTunes*\. Once done, running the`it`command without any arguments will pause or resume playback, adding`?`prints info about the currently\-playing track, and`prev`and`next`do what you’d expect them to do\. Anything else is passed directly to the player, enabling ad\-hoc queries\. \(The first run will pop up a little window asking you to agree to your music player being controlled via AppleScript\.\)