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A week ago, I was forced to once again reinstall Windows 10. Now I have "2004". I don't know if it was the new version of Windows 10, or the new version of foobar2000, or a combination of both, but now, every time I press my "mute/unmute system sound" button, Windows 10 shows not just the little volume meter overlay, which, while annoying, at least was kind of useful sometimes, but also a whole large extra thing which I have zero interest in:

screenshot

I've searched endlessly for this online, so I don't need to be linked to one of the countless articles which talk about Google Chrome. I don't have that spyware installed, and would never install it, so that's not what's causing it. It seems clear that foobar2000 is somehow communicating with Windows, but I could not find any option in foobar2000 to turn this off. Nor any way to turn the whole thing off in Windows 10 (what a shocker).

I know about the third-party application which disables this, but I simply cannot trust such a thing on my system. Just blindly running random EXEs from sketchy third parties is a luxury I could only afford when I was young and naive and had zero clue about security. These days, it's crippled me since I cannot trust any entity fully, and not apply any of these "fixes" unless they are a clear .reg file which I can actually inspect before executing.

But no such thing seems to be available for this either.

I just want to get rid of the big rectangle saying "foobar2000" in the bottom. If that's impossible, I want the whole thing gone. If that's possible...

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  • Looks like you created two accounts with different credentials. You could/should register one, and use the contact us link to get them merged.
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Sep 4, 2020 at 6:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Microsoft has included media controls in the Windows 10 volume overlay as an option for application developers to take advantage of for quite some time now, and it isn't a new feature in Windows 10 version 2004. Unfortunately, I do not think there is a way to disable the overlay system-wide. It is entirely up to the developer of an application whether or not to include integration with Windows' universal media controls.

That said, foobar2000 enabled integration with Windows 10's Universal Volume Control by default in version 1.5.1 (changelog here). You should be able to disable it by going to the Preferences menu, then clicking on the "Advanced" area (at the bottom). Under "Display", find a checkbox with the text "Integrate with Windows 10 Universal Volume Control". Uncheck if it is checked, and it should disable the "feature".

enter image description here

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    Note that this will probably also prevent you from using media keys to control foobar2000, assuming your keyboard has media keys.
    – Brian
    Sep 4, 2020 at 14:05
  • Winaerotweaker has a tweak to restore the old windows 7 volume controls. Might be worth looking at
    – pinkfloydx33
    Sep 4, 2020 at 21:53
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    @Brian This doesn't prevent media key handling. It's just the overlay that can be toggled with it.
    – Ray
    May 6, 2022 at 17:11

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