Settings

Appearance

Theme — Original (the default dark look) or Tokyo Night, a blue/purple palette that matches the popular desktop theme. The choice applies immediately and is remembered per machine.

Device naming

Device naming controls how Inari's channels, mixes and the virtual mic are labelled in other programs' device lists. Three styles:

Style	A channel called Game appears as
Plain (default)	Game
Suffix	Game (Inari)
Prefix	Inari · Game

This is the setting to reach for when devices "have weird names" in Discord or OBS, or when you cannot tell Inari's virtual devices apart from real hardware in a long list. Existing nodes keep their current label until they are recreated — restart Inari, or rename the channel, to see the change.

Default output and input

Default output is the system default sink: where every channel set to System default plays, and where monitoring is heard.

Default input is the system default source — among other things, the microphone the mic chain captures when its input is left on System default.

Both write the real PipeWire/PulseAudio default, so the change applies system-wide, not just inside Inari.

Balance slider (software ChatMix)

Balance slider shows a two-sided slider in the title bar. It blends two channels: centre means both at 100 %, and sliding toward one side ducks the other, down to silence at the extreme. Click either end icon to choose which channels the two sides control; Inari defaults to Game and Chat when they exist.

This is Inari's software ChatMix — the same game/chat balance a SteelSeries headset gives you on its hardware wheel, available on any hardware. It is not tied to a headset in any way. (If you do have an Arctis Nova Pro, its physical ChatMix wheel is read separately on the Headset page.)

The slider is stateless: its position is derived from the two channel faders, so moving a fader by hand moves the balance too, and profiles capture it for free.

Start at login

Start at login installs a systemd user service (~/.config/systemd/user/inari.service) anchored to your graphical session.

With it enabled, Start minimized appears: Inari boots straight to the tray instead of opening the window. Toggling it rewrites the unit, so it takes effect on the next login.

Starting Inari a second time does not open a second copy — the running instance raises and focuses its window instead. That is also how the command line reaches a running Inari.

Hotkeys

Four actions can be bound to a global shortcut: Mute microphone, Mute a channel (with a picker underneath for which channel), Next profile and Show/hide Inari. Nothing is bound out of the box — click a row, press the combination, or Clear to unbind.

A binding the desktop refuses to hand over is shown as inactive with the reason, rather than looking bound and doing nothing. On Wayland that is the normal case: the compositor owns the keyboard and Inari's grabs go through X11. Bind your compositor's own shortcuts to the CLI instead.

Full detail: Hotkeys.

Remote

Inari Remote serves this same interface over your network, so a tablet on the couch can move faders. It is off by default and, when first switched on, listens on loopback only — nothing on the network reaches it until you pick an address. Pair a device by scanning the QR code; Regenerate token cuts every paired device loose.

The remote is deliberately less capable than the desktop window: it can mix, route, drive the headset, the OLED and media, and load profiles, but it cannot create or delete channels, profiles or mixes, change settings, update, or reset Inari. Those controls are simply not drawn in the browser.

Setup, addresses, ports and the full permission list: Remote control.

Tray menu

Beyond Show Window and Quit, the tray carries two submenus:

• Mute — one checkable row for the microphone and one per channel, so you can mute Chat without opening the window. A mute the engine refuses snaps back.
• Profiles — switch layouts with the window closed.

About

• Audio engine — which backend is live, as one of three states:

  Tag	Means
  native	The native PipeWire engine — live metering, passive routing. What you want.
  fallback	The native engine was unavailable, so Inari drives pactl as a subprocess. Mixes, the mic chain, the software EQ and monitoring are not available.
  stopped	The native engine came up and later died. Audio control is gone until you restart Inari; the fallback does not take over.

  The same indicator sits in the title bar, so a stopped engine is visible without opening Settings.

• Inari <version> — the installed version, the licence, and a reminder that the config lives in ~/.config/inari.

• Updates — check for a new release and, on .deb installs, apply it in place. See Updating.

• Logs — opens the log folder, so you can attach the file to a bug report without hunting for the path. See Collecting logs.

• Tutorial — replays the first-run tour at any time.

Reset Inari

Factory reset — this deletes everything

Reset Inari is not a "restore defaults" button. It permanently deletes:

• the entire ~/.config/inari directory — channels, mixes, profiles, app assignments and history, renamed apps, EQ settings and your saved EQ presets, your hotkey bindings, the remote's pairing token, and all preferences;
• the WirePlumber routing fragment Inari wrote outside that directory.

It also tears down Inari's audio nodes, removes the autostart unit, and relaunches the app as if it had just been installed. The one thing it leaves is the optional anti-crackle headroom fragment. There is no undo and nothing is backed up. If you only want a clean layout, create a fresh profile instead.

A confirmation dialog stands in front of it, but that is the only safeguard.