Welcome to samsung-galaxy-book4-linux-fixes Discussions!

[Andycodeman]

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[MatiDegli]

Hi! First of all, thanks for the project.

I got the speaker fix working fine, but after using it for a bit I wanted a more practical way to manage it depending on whether I actually needed the internal speakers or not.

The main reason was battery life. I wanted a way to save that extra battery usage from the workaround without having to fully uninstall and reinstall the fix every time, so I ended up making 3 small helper scripts for my setup: speaker-on, speaker-off, and speaker-status.

They just manage the same pieces your fix already sets up: the MAX98390 modules, the max98390-hda-i2c-setup.service, the max98390-hda-check-upstream.service, /etc/modules-load.d/max98390-hda.conf, and a local modprobe blacklist file when I want the fix fully off.

So the idea is basically to keep the fix installed, turn it on when I want laptop speakers, turn it off when I don’t need them.

On my machine it’s working well so far. speaker-on brings speaker output back, speaker-off disables it cleanly, the state persists across reboot, and speaker-status just gives me a quick way to see the actual state of the speaker fix.

I only tested this on a Samsung Galaxy Book4 Pro running Fedora, so I’m not saying this is universal or ready to be merged as-is, but I thought it might still be useful to share in case someone else wants the same behavior.

If there’s interest, I can post the scripts here or clean them up a bit and open a small PR for docs.

[Andycodeman]

I already replied but wanted to also add please feel free to post a link to your repo for others that might also want to quickly enbable/disable the fix with your solution. Thanks!

[MatiDegli]

Thanks a lot, really appreciate it.

I cleaned the repo up a bit and made it clearer that the speaker toggle is just an optional manual convenience layer on top of your fix, not something required for battery savings with the current driver.

Here’s the repo in case it’s useful for anyone who wants a quick manual enable/disable workflow:
https://github.com/MatiDegli/samsung-galaxy-book-4-fedora-helpers

I also added the fingerprint workaround/helper steps I ended up using on Fedora for the galaxy book 4 pro.

[Andycodeman]

Nice! Thanks for contributing.

Since it's not a requirement I won't add anything to the installer, but I'll add a section in the readme that talks about it and links to your repo. I'll try to get that done soon.

[MatiDegli]

Sounds good. Really appreciate you being willing to link the repo in the readme.

[Andycodeman]

Hey @MatiDegli — thanks for sharing this, and glad the speaker fix is working for you!

Good news: the current version of the driver actually handles this automatically. The amps are powered down when nothing is playing and only enabled during active audio playback, via the HDA playback hook in the driver:

• Playback starts → amps enable (GLOBAL_EN = 0x01, AMP_EN = 0x81)
• Playback stops → amps disable (GLOBAL_EN = 0x00, AMP_EN = 0x80)

When the MAX98390 amps are in this disabled state, they draw ~10μA per chip — effectively zero battery impact. So having the fix installed and "on" but not actively playing audio shouldn't cost you any meaningful battery life compared to having the modules unloaded entirely.

That said, your scripts are a clean approach if you want an explicit on/off toggle for peace of mind, or if you're using an external speaker/headphones and want to guarantee the modules aren't loaded at all.

Note: The README previously had outdated info saying the amps consumed 0.3–0.5W when idle — that was from an older version of the driver before playback hooks were implemented. Just updated it to reflect the current behavior.

[jjyn0215]

Wow, I think the community has mastered all hardware related functions to work perfectly. I'm using F44 on my 4 pro and all functions are working normal. It's just like windows. Thank you guys all!

[Andycodeman]

Thanks for sharing @jjyn0215 and glad to hear it! 🙂