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Frantisek
Asked: 2013-07-01 00:16:42 +0800 CST

Mute a microphone with a keyboard shortcut?

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I'm using this method to mute the microphone in Ubuntu 13.04, however I'm missing a visual representation that the action has taken place and is currently in action.

Is it possible to improve this method, or use another method, to have my microphone muted and know for sure that this has happened? A microphone indicator would be enough, probably.

microphone

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    OK, I've solved it!

    I've created two shell files:

    mute_mic.sh:

    killall notify-osd;
amixer set Capture nocap && notify-send 'Microphone ! DISABLED !'

    unmute_mic.sh:

    killall notify-osd;
amixer set Capture cap && notify-send 'Microphone ! ENABLED !'

    Then I've simply assigned to run those two files on my desired keyboard shortcuts.

    Thanks to @Wouter for finding the notify-send command!

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  2. if you're using gnome-shell, the gnome-shell extension nothing to say, which can be installed from its extensions.gnome.org page, provides a microphone icon, mouse and keyboard control, and walkie-talkie style push-to-talk.

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  3. Most Linux desktops already react to a special mute microphone key (that on notebooks often is accessible via some Fn + function key combination, along with volume up/down/mute). If you don't have such a key, you can map a free key to it.

    My keyboard has a set of multimedia keys; I used xev to find out the keycode of one (163), and then remapped that to the XF86AudioMicMute target. Put the mapping in ~/.Xmodmap and activate via $ xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap:

    ! Map the Mail special key from my MS Natural Keyboard Pro to microphone mute.
keycode 163 = XF86AudioMicMute NoSymbol XF86AudioMicMute

    In GNOME and Unity, the toggling of the mute state will be indicated by a big icon overlay in the middle the desktop.

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  4. For a more recent answer in Ubuntu 20.04: open Settings -> Keyboard Shortcuts and search for "Microphone mute/unmute" in the list. You can then assign the shortcut you want.

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