Profiles — saved layouts

A profile is a snapshot of your entire mixer: the channel set (names, icons, volumes, mutes), every app→channel assignment, the output device and failover setting per channel, all per-channel EQs, and your mixes with their membership, level and mute.

On first run Inari saves the current layout as Default, so there is always a known-good state to come back to.

Switching

Profiles live in the profile menu in the title bar, and in the Profiles submenu of the tray icon — the tray path lets you switch layouts without opening the window at all. There are three more ways in that never touch the window:

• a global hotkey bound to Next profile (Hotkeys);
• inari profile <name> from a script or a desktop shortcut (Command line);
• the remote, which may load a profile but not create, delete or re-bind one.

However you switch, the rest of the UI follows.

Loading a profile reconciles the layout: missing channels are created, extra ones are removed (their apps fall back to the default output first), then volumes, mutes, outputs, failover, EQs and mixes are applied.

Create in the profile menu makes a fresh profile with the default four channels, no routing and everything following the system default. Names may be 1–64 characters, letters, digits, spaces, - and _.

Live binding — there is no Save button

Your active profile is written continuously

The profile you last loaded is live-bound: every change you make — moving a fader, muting, routing an app, editing an EQ, adding a mix — is saved into it immediately. There is no separate "save" step, and no way to try something out and discard it by switching away.

This is deliberate: switching to another profile and back never loses work. But it does surprise people who expect profiles to be read-only presets. If you want a layout frozen, do not use it as your working profile — create a second one to experiment in.

The name of the active profile is shown on the profile button in the title bar and checked in the tray submenu, and it survives restarts.

One consequence of the volume read added in v1.0.10: a profile is not replayed at startup. Inari takes each channel's volume and mute from the sink itself (see Mixer), and the autosave then writes those values into the active profile. The profile follows the audio, not the other way round — loading a profile explicitly is still what applies its stored levels.

Auto-switch when a device connects

A profile can bind itself to an output device and load automatically the moment that device appears. Plug in your headset and your headset layout is live; switch on the speakers and the living-room profile takes over.

To set it up, open the profile menu, click the bolt icon on a profile row and pick a device from the list — or No auto-switch to clear it. Rows with a trigger show auto-loads with <device> underneath.

Notes:

• The trigger fires on a device appearing, i.e. a device that was not present a moment ago. Devices already connected when Inari starts do not re-trigger.
• Bind a device to one profile only. If several profiles name the same device, the first one alphabetically wins.
• The trigger is stored with the profile, so it comes along when the profile is autosaved.

Deleting

The delete button on a profile row removes its file. Deleting the profile you are currently in unbinds the autosave — your live setup keeps running, it is just no longer being written to any profile until you load one again.

Profiles are plain JSON under ~/.config/inari/profiles/ — see Configuration & files.