Hello folks. My goal is to programmatically enable or disable playback devices in Windows 7. I have headphones and speakers that I switch between frequently enough that it would be nice to automate it. Right now, if I want to switch between the two, I have to right-click the sound icon in my taskbar, click "Playback devices", right-click the currently enabled device, disabling it, and then right-click the disabled one, enabling it.

I've already looked into Microsoft's DevCon tool. It almost does what I describe, except it can only enable/disable the entire HDAUDIO device. I want to enable/disable either "Headphones" or "Speakers", which I don't think are given individual device IDs.

I did a bit of CPAN searching and didn't find much. I'm thinking maybe there's an automation "suite" that can access windows and click stuff within them. (XPath or something).

Any ideas?

Edit: I can programmatically open up the sound options window I'm talking about with the following command:

C:\> control mmsys.cpl

Just need to be able to identify entities within the window and left- or right-click on them. I think Win32::GuiTest can do that.

Double Edit: This is how I am doing it, for anyone that still cares:

Enable headphones:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use Win32::GuiTest qw(FindWindowLike GetWindowRect MouseMoveAbsPix Sen
+dMouse
    SendKeys SetForegroundWindow PushButton);

system "control mmsys.cpl";
sleep 1;
my @sound = FindWindowLike(undef, "Sound");
my @list = FindWindowLike($sound[0], "", "SysListView32");
my ($left, $top, $right, $bottom) = GetWindowRect($list[0]);
MouseMoveAbsPix($right - 7, $top + 57);
SendMouse("{RightClick}");
SendKeys("{E}");
MouseMoveAbsPix($right - 7, $top + 112);
SendMouse("{RightClick}");
SendKeys("{D}");
SetForegroundWindow($sound[0]);
PushButton("OK");

[download]

Enable speakers:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use Win32::GuiTest qw(FindWindowLike GetWindowRect MouseMoveAbsPix Sen
+dMouse
    SendKeys SetForegroundWindow PushButton);

system "control mmsys.cpl";
sleep 1;
my @sound = FindWindowLike(undef, "Sound");
my @list = FindWindowLike($sound[0], "", "SysListView32");
my ($left, $top, $right, $bottom) = GetWindowRect($list[0]);
MouseMoveAbsPix($right - 7, $top + 57);
SendMouse("{RightClick}");
SendKeys("{D}");
MouseMoveAbsPix($right - 7, $top + 112);
SendMouse("{RightClick}");
SendKeys("{E}");
SetForegroundWindow($sound[0]);
PushButton("OK");

[download]

In reply to Programmatically enable/disable a playback device in Windows 7 by thmsdrew

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