Steam – How to prevent the Steam from messing with the outside audio

steam

Imagine me, sitting there at my computer watching a YouTube video. While I am sitting there, a friend of me messages me. Steam, trying to be the considerate person, lowers the volume of my video. I reach over to the volume slider, and move it back up. Seconds later though, as my friend messages me, Steam pulls the slider back down to a lower level. I tried looking around in the settings, but there was nothing about prevent it from altering my audio. Is there a way, and if so, how?

Best Answer

This is a windows feature which can cause issues with a number of gaming applications e.g. Steam and Teamspeak. Fortunately there's an easy way to turn it off:

  1. Go to your Windows Control Panel
  2. Sound
  3. Communications tab
  4. Where it says "When Windows detects communications activity:", Select "Do Nothing"

Do nothing

Windows automatically partially mutes other applications when it detects what it thinks of as a phone call.