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Microsoft is deprecating the classic Volume Mixer app

Windows 10 introduced a new style of items and their panes/flyouts which open from the notification area. All of the applets which open from the system tray are different now. This includes the Date/Time pane, the Action Center, the Network pane, and the volume control flyout. In addition to these changes, the classic sound volume mixer is getting replaced with its modern counterpart from Settings.

Windows 10 Classic Volume Mixer App

Starting in Windows 10 Build 18272, the right-click context menu command Open Volume mixer opens the 'App volume and device preferences' page of Settings.

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Windows 10 Build 18272 Volume Mixer

This page allows changing the sound level for system sounds. It includes controls to mute apps, change the "master" volume level, select output and input devices, and more. For reference, see

Set Audio Output Device For Apps Individually in Windows 10

The classic Volume Mixer app is still available as of this writing. You can open it as follows.

  1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.
  2. Type sndvol in the Run box.
  3. The classic app will open.

Windows 10 Classic Volume Mixer App

It is worth mentioning that it is still possible to enable the classic volume control in Windows 10 as described here:

How to enable the old Volume control in Windows 10

Old Classic Sound Volume Flyout

The classic volume mixer is also accessible from the classic Control Panel app. The Control Panel still comes with a number of options and tools which are not available in Settings. It has a familiar user interface which many users prefer over the Settings app. You can use Administrative tools, manage user accounts on the computer in a flexible way, maintain data backups, change the functionality of hardware and many other things. However, in every release, Windows 10 is getting more and more classic options converted to a modern page in the Settings app. At some point, Microsoft might remove the classic Control Panel completely.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

5 thoughts on “Microsoft is deprecating the classic Volume Mixer app”

  1. Microsoft build ever more bullsh* ..
    if there nothing to make more better, should they let then hands away,
    but they don’t ! They Makes ever more comercial, ever more “you have to have a member on Microsift and therewith makes the peoples ever more dependent ..
    My Hope is Reactos .. it will come, certainly even.
    Win10 Spysoftware is only in VBox, it comes not on my Hardware..
    such a bullsch**
    I can wait for Reactos.org

    best regards
    Blacky

  2. The classic mixer didn’t cover everything else the user had open in the background, so why should the new UI do that? If the volume page in Settings app is resized to the mixer size, EVERYTHING else in Settings app will not fit in the smaller area, which means more scrolling. This is horrible design and usability.

    It looks like we will need a trick to reactivate the old mixer soon (SndVol.exe) using the Debugger reg trick or a newer version of SimpleSndVol with all bugs fixed and improved features will be required to replace the Settings app volume mixer entirely.

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