Hide audio sinks according to PipeWire settings

[PhrozenByte]

First of all: Thank you for your work and your great little extension here! ❤️

I'd like to suggest that the extension additionally honors PipeWire settings. PipeWire allows for complex rules to match sinks, not just based on the sink's name. Check out https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePlumber#Obtain_interface_name_for_rules_matching for details.

For example, I work on my laptop in different offices. In one office the primary audio sink is the HDMI output, in another office the HDMI output isn't in use. With PipeWire it's easy to distinguish both offices by matching against the node.nick (in case of HDMI often the screen model); however, the extension only allows for name matching. It would be great if the extension could check whether a device was disabled with PipeWire and hide it in the GNOME settings as well (the audio sink can't be selected anyway). Same could be done to hide digital audio profiles.

Here are my WirePlumber ALSA rules to prioritize HDMI output with the ASUS MX279 screen and force analog audio, but disable HDMI output with the MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD screen:

monitor.alsa.rules = [
  # ASUS MX279 screen: Prioritize device and force analog audio
  {
    matches = [
      {{
        node.name = "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.hdmi-stereo"
        node.nick = "MX279"
      }}
    ]
    actions = {
      update-props = {
        priority.driver = 100
        priority.session = 100
        device.profile-set = "analog-only.conf"
      }
    }
  }

  # MSI Optix MAG274QRF-QD screen: Disable HDMI audio output
  {
    matches = [
      {{
        node.name = "alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.hdmi-stereo"
        node.nick = "MAG274QRF-QD"
      }}
    ]
    actions = {
      update-props = {
         node.disabled = true
      }
    }
  }
}

Here's the output of wpctl status from within the office with the ASUS MX279 screen:

$ wpctl status
PipeWire 'pipewire-0' [1.4.1, daniel@notebook, cookie:123456789]
 └─ Clients:
        [… snip …]

Audio
 ├─ Devices:
 │      35. KT USB Audio                        [alsa]
 │      81. Internes Audio                      [alsa]
 │  
 ├─ Sinks:
 │      56. KT USB Audio Analoges Stereo        [vol: 1.00]
 │  *   61. Internes Audio Digitales Stereo (HDMI) [vol: 0.64]
 │  
 ├─ Sources:
 │      66. Internes Audio Analoges Stereo      [vol: 1.00 MUTED]
 │  *   77. KT USB Audio Mono                   [vol: 1.00]
 │  
 ├─ Filters:
 │  
 └─ Streams:
        [… snip …]

Video
  [… snip …]

Settings
 └─ Default Configured Devices:
         0. Audio/Sink    alsa_output.pci-0000_00_1f.3.hdmi-stereo
         1. Audio/Source  alsa_input.usb-KTMicro_KT_USB_Audio_2021-06-07-0000-0000-0000--00.mono-fallback

[marcinjahn]

Interesting idea. I wonder though, aren't you able to use WirePlumber to change the device name so that it appears as two different entities in the Gnome Quick Settings? Then, you could hide the one you don't need easily with the extension as it is.

[PhrozenByte]

Great idea, didn't even think about that 👍 I just gave it a try, but unfortunately it has no effect. The problem seems to be that GNOME simply ignores any Pipewire settings, the same way GNOME happily lists audio sinks that have been disabled with Pipewire and thus can't actually be selected.

[marcinjahn]

Bummer. Regarding your original idea, I'd probably be open to accept a PR for that, provided it can be disabled/enabled.
I don't think I'll find time/energy to implement this myself, since I'm not going to be the user of it.

[marcinjahn]

Not sure if there's any incompatibility, but just to make sure, it's important to keep https://github.com/marcinjahn/gnome-quicksettings-audio-devices-renamer-extension working fine, even when the new feature is enabled. There's lots of people who use both of these extensions at the same time (and they were designed to work together).