Switchboard → Compared

Switchboard vs EarTrumpet vs SoundSwitch

I wrote Switchboard after using the other two, so this page is not neutral and pretending otherwise would insult you. What it is instead is accurate: every claim below comes from each project's own documentation, and the section on where Switchboard loses is longer than the section on where it wins.

The short version: all three are free, two of them are open source and considerably more mature than mine, and if you only want to change your default speakers with a keyboard shortcut, you do not need Switchboard.

The comparison

Checked against each project's own documentation on 30 September 2026. If something here is wrong or has changed, tell me and I'll correct it — that is a promise I can actually keep, unlike keeping a table accurate forever.

Choose EarTrumpet if you want a better volume mixer

EarTrumpet is the most established of the three by a wide margin — over eleven thousand stars, a Microsoft Store Community Choice award, coverage from The Verge and Linus Tech Tips, and translations in more than twenty languages. It replaces the Windows volume flyout with a proper per-app mixer, complete with live audio peaking, and it can move individual apps between playback devices and manage the default device too.

It is better than Switchboard at the thing it is for. If your actual complaint is "I want to see and adjust the volume of every app at once", install EarTrumpet and stop reading. Switchboard has no volume mixer and is not trying to have one.

Choose SoundSwitch if you want hotkeys and nothing else

SoundSwitch does one job extremely well: press a key, cycle to the next audio device. It also switches recording devices, mutes your microphone from a hotkey, saves audio configurations as profiles, can switch automatically when a particular app starts or takes focus, and offers a choice of toast, banner or sound notification. It is GPL-3.0 and free, with a donation button and no paid tier.

If you never want to look at a window at all, SoundSwitch is the better tool. It is the leanest of the three and it has years of polish behind it. Switchboard's hotkeys do the same job; SoundSwitch's do it with less program attached.

Choose Switchboard if the audio device isn't the only thing you're switching

Here is the honest gap the other two leave, and the entire reason this exists.

On my desk, "switch to my speaker" is not one action. The speaker is a Bluetooth speaker, so it has to be connected before Windows will even list it as an audio device — which means the Settings app, the Bluetooth pane, waiting, and then the sound switcher. Neither EarTrumpet nor SoundSwitch can connect a Bluetooth device, because neither is a Bluetooth tool. They start being useful at the point where the device already exists.

Switchboard puts audio outputs, inputs, paired Bluetooth devices and game controllers in one surface, so a disconnected Bluetooth speaker is one click away from being your output, and the controller you're about to pick up tells you its battery level in the same window. There is also a command palette — a keystroke, a few letters of a device name, enter — for when you know what you want and don't want to aim a mouse at it.

That's the whole claim. Not "better", just wider: one place for the devices, instead of one place for the audio ones.

Where Switchboard loses

Read this part before you download anything. These are not disclaimers, they are real disadvantages that the other two do not have.

• It isn't open source. Both alternatives are. That is one fewer way for you to check what the program does, and it is a legitimate reason to prefer them. What I offer instead is a published SHA-256 and my name on the thing.
• The installer isn't signed yet, so Windows shows "Windows protected your PC" when you run it. EarTrumpet arrives through the Microsoft Store, which is a much easier first five seconds.
• It is version 1.0 written by one person. EarTrumpet has years of contributors and a Microsoft award; SoundSwitch has years of bug reports fixed. Switchboard has me. Assume it has bugs they no longer have.
• English only. EarTrumpet is translated into more than twenty languages.
• No per-app volume mixer. If that is the feature you came for, EarTrumpet is simply the right answer.

You can run more than one of them

Worth saying plainly, because nobody ever does: these are not mutually exclusive. They read and set the same Windows audio settings rather than replacing the audio stack, so running EarTrumpet for its mixer alongside Switchboard for device and Bluetooth switching works fine. I did exactly that for a while. If you already like your setup, you do not have to abandon it to try this.

Or read getting started first to see what installing it actually involves.