The sound effects in Windows and third party applications are cool but can be disturbing and annoying at some times. You wouldn’t want your Windows Live Messenger messenger sound effects to play when you’re at a meeting or at night when your wife is already asleep. It is just humanly normal that we sometimes may forget to turn off the sound but we could prevent all that from happening by using a set and forget free software called Volume Concierge to automatically adjust the volume based on the rules that we set. The only restriction with this tool is it won’t adjust the volume when the schedule is missed probably due to the computer is turned off or the program is not running.
During installation, take note that it will ask to install a third party software called CleanMyPC. Uncheck “Try CleanMyPC for free” option and then followed by clicking the Install Now button. After installation, running Volume Concierge the first time will prompt for a one time free activation. All you need to do is enter an email address on the form but you can actually enter any bogus email address if you don’t want to receive any possible promotional emails from them.
You are then presented with a clean and simple user interface to schedule the automatic volume adjustment. First click on the OFF button to turn it On, select the day and time followed by moving the slider to adjust the volume percentage you want. The changes takes effect immediately after selection and there are no OK or Apply button to click. You are able to add more rules by clicking the Add New Volume Rule button located at the bottom of the program. Once you’ve done setting up the rules, close it and it’ll be minimized to the notification area. Volume Concierge will also auto start with Windows by default and that option can be configured by right clicking on the Volume Concierge’s icon at the tray area.
When Volume Concierge has successfully helped you set up your volume rule, it will prompt a “Share your success” notification window asking you to Tweet it. You can disable this window from appearing in future by checking Don’t shot this message again and close the window.
Volume Concierge needs to be running in background in order to automatically adjust the volume based on the rules that you’ve set and the time on your system. It takes up quite a bit of memory usage from 10-20MB. Volume Concierge is free and compatible with Windows 7, Vista, and XP.
Very useful software Raymond.