Dear Maintainer,

The changelog on https://freedesktop.org/software/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/ for
version 4.0 includes "There can now be only one pavucontrol window open at a
time. Trying to start pavucontrol for a second time brings the first window to
foreground.". This is a misfeature for the way I use pavucontrol.

Previously, I would often have pavucontrol open on multiple desktops at once
(e.g. I have a desktop for games and another one for TV streaming and want
volume control on those two but not on others).

(As this was called out in the upstream changelog, I don't really expect it to
be changed, so some simple workarounds are (1) just set the window to show on
all desktops or (2) make more use of the panel applet.)

Thank you,
Daniel

I second this request.

Another use-case which cannot be addressed with window manager hacks is
starting pavucontrol with different PULSE_SERVER environment variables.

My use case is controlling audio servers in the LAN. When routing a stream
there, I’d typically want to have both my local pavucontrol and a pavucontrol
with PULSE_SERVER=audioserver for remote controlling open.

Thanks.

Upstream bug here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/-/issues/75

Attracting the usual level of developer interest for a freedesktop
project.

This seems to be the patch that introduced the broken behaviour:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pavucontrol/-/commit/f6ce4fb8db51489f6ab1210593695f465ccb83a0

Behaviour looks pretty entrenched - don't know how hard it would be to
put it all under a commandline switch.