HeadsetControl

A cross-platform tool to control USB gaming headsets on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Manage sidetone, battery status, LED lights, equalizers, and more.

Features

• Sidetone - Hear your own voice without latency (unlike software loopback)
• Battery Status - Monitor charge level, voltage, and time remaining
• LED Control - Toggle lights on/off and set their color
• Equalizer - Presets and custom EQ curves (including parametric EQ)
• Inactive Time - Auto power-off timer
• Chat-Mix - Game/chat audio balance
• Microphone - Volume, mute LED brightness, rotate-to-mute
• Voice Prompts - Enable/disable audio cues
• Bluetooth - Power-on behavior, call volume

Check the Supported Devices table below to confirm your headset is covered.

Installation

The quickest way to install is through your platform's package manager. Prefer a ready-made binary? Grab one from the Releases page — every release ships GPG-signed source, Linux (AppImage / .deb / .rpm / portable), macOS, and Windows (installer + portable) builds. The rolling continuous pre-release tracks the latest master.

Linux

Ubuntu / Debian — PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sapd/headsetcontrol
sudo apt update && sudo apt install headsetcontrol

Fedora — COPR

sudo dnf copr enable thesapd/headsetcontrol
sudo dnf install headsetcontrol

RHEL / CentOS Stream / Rocky / AlmaLinux 10 — COPR

hidapi ships in EPEL on the RHEL family, so enable that first:

sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf copr enable thesapd/headsetcontrol
sudo dnf install headsetcontrol

Arch Linux — available in the AUR

yay -S headsetcontrol   # or the -git variant for the latest master

NixOS

# configuration.nix
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.headsetcontrol ];
services.udev.packages = [ pkgs.headsetcontrol ];  # for udev rules

Or run without installing: nix run nixpkgs#headsetcontrol

Gentoo — nitratesky overlay

eselect repository enable nitratesky
emerge -a app-misc/headsetcontrol

FreeBSD

pkg install headsetcontrol

macOS

Homebrew

brew install sapd/headsetcontrol/headsetcontrol

Append --HEAD for the latest development version. A portable binary is also available on the Releases page — it is a self-contained universal build (Apple Silicon and Intel) that needs no Homebrew and runs on macOS 13.3 or newer.

Windows

Download the installer or the portable .exe from the Releases page.

Build from source

Requirements

• C++20 compiler (GCC 13+, Clang 16+, Apple Clang 15+, MSVC 2019 16.10+)
• CMake 3.12+
• HIDAPI library

Install dependencies

Debian / Ubuntu

apt-get install build-essential git cmake libhidapi-dev

Fedora

dnf install cmake hidapi-devel g++

Arch Linux

pacman -S git cmake hidapi

RHEL / CentOS / Rocky / AlmaLinux

dnf install epel-release
dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
dnf install git cmake hidapi-devel

openSUSE

zypper in -t pattern devel_basis
zypper in cmake libhidapi-devel

FreeBSD

pkg install hidapi cmake

macOS

brew install hidapi cmake

Xcode (from the App Store) is required for the compilers.

Windows — for compilation using MSYS2/MinGW, see the Development Guide.

Build and install

git clone https://github.com/Sapd/HeadsetControl && cd HeadsetControl
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

On Linux, make install also installs udev rules for non-root access. Reload them with:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗