Quickly Managing Specific Application Sounds in Windows 7

Working with 2 monitors, I usually have Windows Media Center on one monitor, either streaming Netflix or playing live TV.

What happens a lot, is that I want to watch a video on Youtube or on myITforum.com TV, or even listen to a Podcast.  If you’ve used WMC at all, you know that muting WMC actually mutes the entire computer instead of just WMC.  Windows has the ability to mute per application, which is great, but you have to dig deep into Windows sound settings to get to the feature.

What I’ve done is create a quick access icon on my Windows 7 task bar so that the Volume Mixer is always available.

To do this…

1. Locate the Sound icon in the Windows 7 system tray.

2. Right-click on the Sound icon and choose “Open Volume Mixer”.

3. Once the Volume Mixer is open…

…drop down to the icon on the taskbar, right-click on the icon, and choose “Pin this program to the taskbar”

Now…you’ll always have the Volume Mixer icon handy.