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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I don't want my computer play any sound through it's own speaker during work hours in weekdays. But I want to be able to listen to music using my headphones.

I guess something can be done with Automator to schedule a bunch of commands in order to do this.

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Also, Context-aware settings via symonds.id.au/marcopolo – mankoff May 12 '12 at 9:33

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

You could try using breakaway and set up a simple applescript set volume output volume 0 to trigger when the headphones are unplugged. (And of course, you could set up another trigger to turn the volume back up when the headphones are plugged in again.)

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Wow - that's far more elegant a solution than I expected. That software is awesome! – bmike♦ May 11 '12 at 21:31
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Doesn't OSX automatically store two different volume levels for speakers and headphones? – Ben Alpert May 11 '12 at 21:32
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@Ben Yes, you could always just remember to manually mute & un-mute the speaker, but I'm not sure you could reliably script the volume levels to do this at 9 & 5. e.g. After work, you unplug your headphones and crank the volume up on your internal speakers. You schedule a script to set the volume to 0 at 9am the next day. However, if you happen to already have the headphones plugged in at 9am, your script would mute your headphones. When you unplug your headphones, the internal speaker volume will still be loud from the previous night. – Nix May 11 '12 at 22:55
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The simple solution would to always leave your headphones connected and lower the volume should you have music leaking from the headphones when they rest on the desk as opposed to on your head.

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