Show help.

Show version information.

Load the daemon configuration file daemon.conf (see below), parse remaining configuration options on the command line and dump the resulting daemon configuration, in a format that is compatible with daemon.conf.

List available loadable modules. Combine with -v for a more elaborate listing.

List available audio resamplers.

Identify stale PulseAudio POSIX shared memory segments in /dev/shm and remove them if possible. This is done implicitly whenever a new daemon starts up or a client tries to connect to a daemon. It should normally not be necessary to issue this command by hand. Only available on systems with POSIX shared memory segments implemented via a virtual file system mounted to /dev/shm (e.g. Linux).

Kill an already running PulseAudio daemon of the calling user (Equivalent to sending a SIGTERM).

Return 0 as return code when the PulseAudio daemon is already running for the calling user.

Run as system-wide instance instead of per-user. Please not that this disables certain features of PulseAudio and is generally not recommended unless the system knows no local users (e.g. is a thin client). This feature needs special configuration and a dedicated UNIX user set up. It is highly recommended to combine this with --disallow-module-loading (see below).

Daemonize after startup, i.e. detach from the terminal.

Fail startup when any of the commands specified in the startup script default.pa (see below) fails.

Try to acquire a high Unix nice level. This will only succeed if the calling user has a non-zero RLIMIT_NICE resource limit set (on systems that support this), or we're called SUID root (see below), or we are configure to be run as system daemon (see --system above). It is recommended to enable this, since it is only a negligible security risk (see below).

Try to acquire a real-time scheduling for PulseAudio's I/O threads. This will only succeed if the calling user has a non-zero RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limit set (on systems that support this), or we're called SUID root (see below), or we are configure to be run as system daemon (see --system above). It is recommended to enable this only for trusted users, since it is a major security risk (see below).

Disallow module loading after startup. This is a security feature since it disallows additional module loading during runtime and on user request. It is highly recommended when --system is used (see above). Note however, that this breaks certain features like automatic module loading on hot plug.

Terminate the daemon when idle and the specified number of seconds passed.

Unload autoloaded modules when idle and the specified number of seconds passed.

Unload autoloaded samples from the cache when the haven't been used for the specified number of seconds.

If an argument is passed, set the log level to the specified value, otherwise increase the configured verbosity level by one. The log levels are numerical from 0 to 4, corresponding to error, warn, notice, info, debug. Default log level is notice, i.e. all log messages with lower log levels are printed: error, warn, notice.

Increase the configured verbosity level by one (see --log-level above). Specify multiple times to increase log level multiple times.

Specify the log target. If set to auto (which is the default), then logging is directed to syslog when --daemonize is passed, otherwise to STDERR.

Set the search path for dynamic shared objects (plugins).

Use the specified resampler by default (See --dump-resample-methods above for possible values).

Create a PID file. If this options is disabled it is possible to run multiple sound servers per user.

Do not install CPU load limiter on platforms that support it. By default, PulseAudio will terminate itself when it notices that it takes up too much CPU time. This is useful as a protection against system lockups when real-time scheduling is used (see below). Disabling this meachnism is useful when debugging PulseAudio with tools like which slow down execution.

PulseAudio clients and the server can exchange audio data via POSIX shared memory segments (on systems that support this). If disabled PulseAudio will communicate exclusively over sockets. Please note that data transfer via shared memory segments is always disabled when PulseAudio is running with --system enabled (see above).

Load the specified plugin module with the specified arguments.

Run the specified script on startup. May be specified multiple times to specify multiple scripts to be run in order. Combine with -n to disable loading of the default script default.pa (see below).

Open a command interpreter on STDIN/STDOUT after startup. This may be used to configure PulseAudio dynamically during runtime. Equivalent to --load=module-cli.

Don't load default script file default.pa (see below) on startup. Useful in conjunction with -C or --file.