![]() | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
![]() | |
![]() Screenshot | |
Developer(s) |
|
---|---|
Initial release | 17 July 2004[1] |
Stable release | 17.0[2]
/ 12 January 2024 |
Repository | gitlab |
Written in | C[3] |
Operating system | FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, Illumos, Solaris, macOS, and Microsoft Windows (not maintained) |
Platform | ARM, PowerPC, x86 / IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS |
Type | Sound server |
License | LGPL-2.1-or-later[4] |
Website | pulseaudio.org |
PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS; as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system. It serves as a middleware in between applications and hardware and handles raw PCM audio streams.[5]
PulseAudio is free and open-source software, and is licensed under the terms of the LGPL-2.1-or-later.[4]
It was created in 2004 under the name Polypaudio but was renamed in 2006 to PulseAudio.[6]
PulseAudio competes with newer PipeWire, which provides a compatible PulseAudio server (known as pipewire-pulse), and PipeWire is now used by default on many Linux distributions, including Fedora Linux, Ubuntu, and Debian.[7][8][9]