Ubuntu – Customize pop-up indicator position and size for power and volume

gnome-shelliconsindicatorsound

When changing the volume (by pressing the keyboard keys) this icon pop ups, right in the middle of the screen:

I would like to change both the position and the icon, ideally to a more discreet location on the screen. I've seen other questions asking how to change the icon completely, but haven't found how to change the position and size.

Edit: I suppose whatever process works for the volume indicator also works for the brightness indicator. (Not sure if "indicator" is the right word for these icons.)

Best Answer

Better OSD is what you're looking for. It works very well on Ubuntu 18.04. It is a Gnome extension, that is available via Ubuntu Software too.

After installing it via Ubuntu software, you can access to its settings via Gnome tweaks>Extensions (if you don't have Gnome Tweaks, you can install it from Ubuntu Software too).
Here are some screenshots of what I got after playing around with the extension settings:

You can even resize the volume indicator

PS: If it doesn't work for you directly after installing it, you may need to restart the gnome shell environment ("logout and login again", or Alt+F2 then R then Enter)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Scale volume and/or screen brightness with a logarithmic scale

That bothered me as well, at least for the brightness adjustment, so I wrote the following script (edit: alternative backlight control commands added in comments):

#!/bin/bash

current=`xbacklight -get`
# alternatively, if xbacklight does not work:
# current=`qdbus org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power /org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/Power org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power.Screen.GetPercentage`

scale="1 2 5 10 20 50 100"

case $1 in
    "down")
        # translate space to newline so tac will reverse order of lines (values)
        for val in $(tr ' ' '\n' <<< $scale | tac) ; do
            # scale = 3 to preserve some decimal values
            if (( $(bc <<< "scale=3 ; $val < $current/1.1") )) ; then
                newval=$val
                break
            fi
        done
        ;;
    "up")
        for val in $scale ; do
            # scale = 3 to preserve some decimal values
            if (( $(bc <<< "scale=3 ; $val > $current*1.1") )) ; then
                newval=$val
                break
            fi
        done
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $0 [up, down]"
        exit 1
esac

if [ "x$newval" == "x" ] ; then
    echo "Already at min/max."
else
    echo "Setting backlight to $newval."

    # thanks: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=981217#p981217
    notify-send " " -i notification-display-brightness-low -h int:value:$newval -h string:x-canonical-private-synchronous:brightness &

    xbacklight -set $newval -steps 1 -time 0
    # alternatively, if xbacklight does not work:
    # qdbus org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power /org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/Power org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power.Screen.SetPercentage $newval
fi

exit 0

It depends on having xbacklight installed.

Name it brightness.sh, and running brightness.sh up or brightness.sh down will step up or down through the scale specified at the top of the script. The call to notify-send triggers the on-screen brightness notification (at least in Unity). (I'm sure the script could be improved some, but it seems to work well enough.)

I then setup keyboard shortcuts (for my tablet's volume rocker buttons, in my case) to trigger /path/to/brightness.sh up and /path/to/brightness.sh down.

To do something similar for volume, you'd need to replace the calls to xbacklight with a command that lets you read/set the volume and change the notification to be a volume notification.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Scale volume and/or screen brightness with a logarithmic scale

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