Why we built it, how it works, and who's behind it.
Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is one of the most common preventable disabilities in the world. Unlike a sudden noise trauma, NIHL from everyday device use creeps up silently — years of listening to music at 80% volume, hours of conference calls with the speaker turned up loud. By the time you notice the ringing or the muffled sounds, the damage is already done and is permanent.
Most people know they should keep their volume down. What they lack is a consistent, frictionless reminder — one that lives in the background and gently intervenes, without getting in the way.
After looking at the available tools — mostly mobile apps or expensive hardware — we found a gap: there was no lightweight, privacy-respecting, cross-platform desktop utility that simply watched your system volume and said something when it mattered.
So we built one. SoundBrake runs silently in your tray, accumulates your real exposure time (not just peak moments), and warns you at the right threshold, in your own language. When things get critical, it steps in automatically.
SoundBrake's warning levels are inspired by the occupational noise guidelines published by NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) and the WHO. These guidelines relate loudness in decibels to safe listening durations.
Because system volume percentages don't map linearly to decibels — and because every speaker and headphone is different — SoundBrake uses conservative estimates:
These are intentionally relaxed compared to lab conditions, because real-world listening is more complex. The goal is awareness, not restriction.
SoundBrake is written in Go 1.21. It compiles to a single native binary on all three platforms — no runtime, no interpreter, no heavy framework. The tray icon is powered by getlantern/systray.
On Windows it reads volume and audio-peak data through WASAPI COM objects via a minimal inline PowerShell snippet. On Linux it uses pactl / PipeWire. On macOS it calls osascript.
Notifications are fully localised in 13 languages. The language is detected
automatically from the operating system — on Windows via a registry key written by the
installer, on Linux/macOS via the LANG environment variable.
The source code is fully open: github.com/eneswritescode/soundbrake.
SoundBrake is open source and contributions are welcome. Whether it's a bug report, a translation for a new language, or a platform improvement — all help is appreciated.
SoundBrake is released under the MIT License. You are free to use, study, modify, and distribute it.
