Computer too loud - or too quiet? Here's how to tweak your settings
You know the feeling: you're listening to music or watching a video and suddenly an email alert sounds loudly and drowns out the thing you actually want to hear. Or you're so engrossed in loud music that you missed the doorbell. Fortunately, it's easy to adjust the sounds on your Windows computer.
Volume levels
The obvious way to make your computer more audible is to increase its volume.
Rather than looking for the physical volume button on your actual speakers, you can increase Windows’ default volume: to bring up the sound mixer, right-click on Speaker icon in the Notification Area (bottom-right of your screen), and then click on Open Volume Mixer.
That brings up a window that shows you all the audio outputs from your PC.
Clicking on the Speakers slider will adjust the overall default volume and the other outputs will adjust at the same time so that they remain relative to the overall volume.
This will increase the overall volume of Windows alerts and sounds on all the applications you use. You can adjust other outputs - in the example, that's the System Sounds and the output from the Spotifyapp on the right - individually too.
Want some more help with your audio settings? Our friendly tech team can help you with one-to-one support on a range of tech issues. Find out more here.
If you just want to turn up the speakers, you can left-click on the speaker icon in the notification area and just adjust the slider.
Visual alerts and subtitles
If you struggle to hear audio alerts, or want to silence them altogether, you can switch to on-screen visual alerts instead.
It’s possible to substitute most of Windows’ audio alerts with on-screen visual cues instead.
To turn that on, launch the Settings app by tapping the Windows key and typing Settings into the search, and then clicking Settings app at the top of the pop-up box.
In the Settings box, click Audio in the left-hand panel, and then choose which kind of visual alert you'd like from the drop-down box.
Flash the active window is a good option.