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What works well for me is a taskbar icon with mouse scrolling (Waybar pulseaudio module on Sway). You see 50% and a speaker icon, hover and scroll up or down to instantly change.

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I prefer having keyboard shortcuts and NOT seeing the numeric volume level at all because otherwise I will have to set the volume to a multiple of 5 or 2 even if the optimal setting is another number. You could also do this with scrolling but for something where you might want immediate changes its good to have keys or key combinations that reliably work everywhere (even with fullscreen applications) instead of having to position the cursor over a small icon.

The icon is traditionally small indeed, but it shouldn’t be. I use the strings “vol-“ and “vol+” as icons, which makes the whole thing 8 characters long.

As a universal law, optimizing the fullscreen experience is a suboptimal goal. Generally, the best solutions are the ones that operate at the appropriate level, and if we optimize the fullscreen experience, then most solutions built for the right level are inaccessible to us.

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