Control your Razer BlackShark V3 Pro headset from the Windows tray, without running Synapse.
Battery, microphone mute, sidetone, game/chat balance, and noise cancellation — in a panel that opens from the notification area and closes when you click away. It uses around 30 MB of memory and starts with Windows if you let it.
- Runs as a normal user. No administrator rights.
- Installs no driver and no service.
- Never touches firmware.
- No network access and no telemetry, ever.
One model, and only one:
| Product | Razer BlackShark V3 Pro (wireless, via its USB dongle) |
| USB vendor id | 0x1532 |
| USB product id | 0x101B |
Other products are not supported, including other BlackShark models. This talks to the headset in a language worked out by watching it, not from documentation, so a different product id is a different device until somebody does that work again.
Not sure what you have? Install it and run headsetctl list --vendor-id 0x1532. If that
prints nothing, this can't talk to your headset.
Download the latest release and run the setup executable. It installs for you only, adds a Start menu entry, and offers to start with Windows.
Windows will warn you. The installer isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen shows "Windows protected your PC". Choose More info, then Run anyway.
To remove it: Settings → Installed apps → Headset Tray → Uninstall.
Click the tray icon to open the panel.
Battery and microphone are shown at the top. The mic reads MUTED if either the
headset's own switch or Windows is muting you, because either one silences you — clicking
it toggles the Windows side, since no software can move a physical switch.
Sidetone (0–15) is how much of your own voice you hear. Game/chat balance (0–20) mixes the two audio channels the headset presents. The button switches which one the slider drives; drag it and let go, and the change is sent once.
Noise control is off, ANC, or ambient.
ANC has four levels. Ambient has none — so the level track goes quiet in that mode, but keeps showing where ANC will land when you switch back, because the headset remembers.
Nothing on screen is a guess. A value the headset refuses shows as --, never as a
number. Losing the wireless link clears the readings rather than leaving stale ones up. And
after every change, the tray asks the headset what it actually holds — so if it disagrees
with what you asked for, you see the truth.
Right-click the icon for Refresh and Exit. The gear opens settings: start with Windows, and whether to warn you when Synapse is running (it can fight this app for the same settings).
Switch output when off moves Windows' sound to another device when the headset goes quiet, and puts it back when the headset returns. Turn it on in settings and pick the device under Play through — your speakers, usually. It's off until you do both.
Holding the power button is what turns the headset off, and that's what this reacts to. The headset reports that its link dropped, not why, so an auto-sleep or walking out of range looks the same and will also move your sound. Brief dropouts won't: nothing moves until the link has held its new state for a couple of seconds.
It puts you back exactly where you were, not on a guess — the dongle presents two playback devices (Game and Chat) and only you know which one you were using. If the tray is closed or restarted while your headset is off, it still remembers what it owes you.
Windows offers no supported way for a program to change the default playback device, so
this uses the same undocumented interface every audio switcher uses. If it ever stops
working, nothing moves and you're left where you were.
docs/undocumented-apis.md is the full record.
When it doesn't move your sound, it says so. You get a notification the first time, and the reason stays on the Switch output when off row in settings until it works again. For the full picture — which device is chosen, which one you're owed a move back to, and what would happen right now — run:
headset-tray.exe --explain-outputIt only reads; it won't move anything.
Split game and chat is a separate switch, off by default. The headset shows up in Windows as two playback devices — a game channel and a chat channel — and Windows keeps a separate default for calls, so the two are there to be used for different things. Turn it on, pick a Game channel and a Chat channel, and whenever the headset powers on your ordinary sound goes to the first and your calls to the second. Leave it off and the tray won't touch which device your calls use.
The panel follows your Windows light or dark setting by default. Appearance in settings overrides that — auto, dark, or light. If you use Windows high contrast, it wins over all three.
It's alpha. It works on the author's hardware and is covered by a few hundred tests, but it speaks a reconstructed protocol and has been used on exactly one headset.
It sends vendor-specific commands to hardware. It performs no firmware access of any kind, and every command it can send was observed being sent by Razer's own software — but no warranty is offered. Running it may void your hardware warranty.
Some things you might expect are not here, because they aren't the headset's to control: volume and software mic mute are handled by Windows, and Synapse's audio enhancements (bass boost, voice clarity, and so on) are processed on your PC by THX rather than on the headset. There is nothing for this app to send.
headsetctl ships alongside the tray. Every command takes --json, and
--include-sensitive to reveal device paths (redacted by default).
> headsetctl get battery
battery: 49
> headsetctl set sidetone 7
sidetone: 7
> headsetctl noise
noise-cancellation: anc level 4
> headsetctl noise --level 2 # keeps the current mode
noise-cancellation: anc level 2
> headsetctl noise --mode ambient # ambient has no level; the ANC level is retained
noise-cancellation: ambient (anc level 2)
| Command | Writes to the device |
|---|---|
list, inspect, probe, watch |
no |
get <name> |
sends a read request |
set <name> <value> |
yes |
noise |
reads; writes only when given --mode or --level |
param get/set <id> |
yes, allowlisted identifiers only |
get reports unavailable rather than a number when the headset refuses a read — which is
what happens when it's switched off. set re-reads afterwards and tells you what the device
actually holds, because a write being acknowledged is not evidence it took effect.
list enumerates every HID collection on the machine and names the best control candidate.
inspect opens one with no I/O rights and prints its report descriptor. probe listens for
an unsolicited report without sending anything; silence is a normal result, since the device
only speaks when something changes.
> headsetctl param get 0x2c # observed but unidentified; no meaning is claimed
0x2c: 0f
The headset speaks a proprietary HID protocol with no public documentation. This project
worked it out by capturing Razer's own software driving the hardware, and
docs/device-research.md records the evidence for every byte:
what was sent, what came back, under what conditions.
The project can only send identifiers it has actually seen on the wire. They live in
allowlists in headset-protocol, which cannot encode anything else — so a guessed or
brute-forced command has no path to your device from anywhere in the codebase. Ten observed
parameters whose meaning was never established stay deliberately unnamed rather than being
given plausible-sounding labels.
No code, comments, or command tables were taken from any other project.
docs/clean-room-notes.md records what was consulted and on
what terms, including a hypothesis that turned out to be wrong.
Further reading: docs/architecture.md for how the crates fit
together, docs/threat-model.md for the security posture, and
docs/history/ for the design record.
Windows only, and the toolchain requirements are more specific than usual — see
CONTRIBUTING.md before you start.
.\build-installer.ps1 # produces dist\HeadsetTray-<version>-setup.exeOr put a build in place without packaging it:
cargo build --release
.\target\release\headset-tray.exe --installContributions are welcome; CONTRIBUTING.md explains the rules that
keep the protocol work honest, and there are a few of them.
This is an unofficial community interoperability utility. It is not affiliated with, authorized by, endorsed by, or sponsored by Razer Inc. or any other manufacturer. Product names are used only to describe hardware compatibility.
Razer, BlackShark, Synapse, and THX are trademarks of their respective owners. They are used here only to identify the hardware this utility interoperates with. This project's licence grants no rights in any trademark.
Licensed under either of
- Apache License, Version 2.0 (
LICENSE-APACHEor https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) - MIT licence (
LICENSE-MITor https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
at your option.
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 licence, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.