Arch Linux

archynoob

Member

Registered: 2026-01-11

Posts: 4

Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

Hi all!

While for example cycling through a YouTube playlist, Firefox changes it's app volume randomly in 30-80% range. There's a bug already in Bugzilla but they care about their users so much that are fixing that for 8 years already and going to finish approximately never.

So the question is: what kind of volume is that(pipewire? KDE? something else?) and is there a way to prevent apps from affecting it?

Thank you!

system72

Member

Registered: 2025-11-22

Posts: 469

Website

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

there are examples in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire-pulse.conf that you can use to block firefox from doing that. iirc there used to be an option within youtube called stable volume or something, maybe thats what is doing it

Last edited by system72 (2026-01-11 12:26:22)

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archynoob

Member

Registered: 2026-01-11

Posts: 4

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

Thanks, system72. Tried to mess around quirks but still no luck.
Tested something like this:

pulse.rules = [
    {
        matches = [
            { client.name = "Firefox" }
        ]
        actions = {
            quirks = [ block-sink-volume ]
        }
    }
]

pulse.rules = [
    {
        matches = [
            { application.process.binary = "firefox" }
        ]
        actions = {
            quirks = [ block-sink-volume ]
        }
    }
]

Is there a way to check if those rules are applied at all?

system72

Member

Registered: 2025-11-22

Posts: 469

Website

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

some of the comments in the bugzilla thread contain configurations that you can try

also see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PipeWire#Configuration

Is there a way to check if those rules are applied at all?

changes are applied after restarting the relevant service

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archynoob

Member

Registered: 2026-01-11

Posts: 4

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

Found similar thread and tried that variant.. looks like I'm doing something wrong...

archynoob

Member

Registered: 2026-01-11

Posts: 4

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

All right.. tried all possible ways to apply block-sink-volume quirk: drop-ins, config in ~/.config/pipewire/, system wide config in /etc/pipewire/, restarted whole system every time - and still Firefox continues changing app volume ?
Even rechecked that I'm on pipewire: `Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.4.9)`.
No errors in `journalctl --user -u pipewire` or `journalctl --user -u pipewire-pulse`.

Is there a way to check if my rules are applied at all or they just don't work?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,975

Re: Firefox changes pipewire volume randomly

There's some pw-config command that will list whether your config was loaded, it most likely was, but it doesn't work with firefox, I also wonder what they are doing exactly that this fails, but it works with other clients/chromium just fine. Ultimately the reason it happens in the first place is somewhat explainable, they are unconditionally setting a volume when connecting the sink to the pulse library, which if you just don't do that or pass null will make the server handle it instead, which is what's expected and what every other lib is doing. I've been meaning to test whether I can patch this relevantly but building a browser just for a little experiment is somewwhat of a taxing task.