Workflow for muting common videoconferencing apps (zoom, meet, Slack, dischord, Skype ...)

[Jonas Helgemo]

Hi everyone!

 

Just published my first workflow as I didn't find any other solutions that addressed my issue. As many of you probably can relate to, I spend hours each day in different videoconferences, and toggling mute on and off is something I do all the time. As I'm a consultant, I need to use a myriad of different apps as different customers prefer different solutions. I'm a keyboard addict, so I like the idea of having a simple hotkey that I can press to mute/unmute when in a meeting.

 

There are other solutions to this (such as https://mutify.app and https://mizage.com/shush) that I have used in the past and that work nicely, but I have had some issues:

 

• Adding a global shortcut that is both easy to use and that don't crash with other app shortcuts is difficult (I have unmuted by accident 😬 on occation)
• In addition, I upgraded my home office with an XLR-mic for better sound, but in such setup, adjusting the microphone volume doesn't work as it's handled by the external soundcard.

 

I started thinking, and came up with the perfect solution using an alfred workflow. The idea is that when certain apps are in focus, I bind hotkeys to that particular apps mute toggle and pass that on via alfred. So in my case, F15, double-tap Option or Home becomes whatever key combination the videoconferencing app in focus uses for toggling mute. Check it out and feel free to modify or extend it to your needs: 

 

https://github.com/helgeblod/alfred-universalmute

Edited November 27, 2020 by Jonas Helgemo

[bargepole]

Hi @Jonas Helgemo, a great idea! I had the same need myself. Just some feedback from me — although I don't know if this is possible — is that it is a limitation that the app (or browser tab in my case) needs to be in focus. I suppose I have a different problem than you, in that I don't find the native shortcuts inconvenient. Instead, I have a note-taking application open during meeting that is the browser tab in-focus, and I have another Chrome tab on a second screen where I view the meeting. Being able to control the mute button inside Google Meet in this case while focused on another app would be ideal. Anyway, I think there are other solutions out there for me.

 

 

 

[xgo]

A solution I have found for this (does not involve Alfred, but could be scripted to do so) is to map a global keyboard shortcut to "send <mute shortcut> to <app>". Using BetterTouchTool, this is pretty straightforward and works really well (and globally). For me, I have this mapped to a special F key on my keyboard, and I use MS Teams:

 

[JoeyBloggs]

Thanks a lot xgo, I didn't know this was possible despite using BTT for years.