[VCM] VCM utility moving to legacy in 0.67 timeframe (updated from community feedback)

[yuyoyuppe]

Update from crutkas:

Based on community feedback, we'll be shifting the decision from removing the feature to moving it into a legacy mode (maintenance only). This will still be in the 0.67 timeframe. Our team will only directly address critical bugs, security and accessibility issues.
We'll accept community PRs for enhancements but to date for VCM, has been small in comparison to others which was one of the supporting factors in our decision.

We love the community and feedback. Thank you for helping guide our decision.

[htcfreek]

What about Win10 users? They don't have the shortcut. I don't think removing the utility will make users happy.

[yuyoyuppe]

This issue is the place to gather feedback like this.

[Aaron-Junker]

Wait, but isn't this feature just for apps that support this. It doesn't work for all apps.

Also there is no feature for camera muting.

[isaacdontjelindellblp]

Chiming in after seeing that a deprecation warning is already in place with the most recent version. I have to be on Windows 10 for a while yet, so this will remove the feature with no replacement for me?

Also, +1 on the other comments (Win 11 shortcut doesn't work for all apps, and no replacement for camera mute).

EDIT:
@yuyoyuppe is this actually gathering feedback, or is this a firm decision? The fact that all the related issues have been closed and linked to this issue makes me think this is a firm decision and not a feedback-gathering issue.

[Jay-o-Way]

Yeah I'm confused too. I think the choice is quite definitive, so what kind of feedback do you want???
Discussions is the place for either an Announcement or a Poll.

[gchacks]

This issue is the place to gather feedback like this.

I use Windows 11 and use VCM a lot when using Zoom. I love the new feature where the display stays on when on mute AND off-MUTE. Please do not deprecate as it is a valuable feature. For Win11, you should look at how you could tap into the mute button displayed in the taskbar to mute/unmute. Currently this only works with MS-Teams but I believe it would VCM could be tweaked to enhance this capablity in Win 11

[6Tom]

EDIT: @yuyoyuppe is this actually gathering feedback, or is this a firm decision? The fact that all the related issues have been closed and linked to this issue makes me thing this is a firm decision and not a feedback-gathering issue.

Same feeling. I strongly hope to retain this feature. I am also a win11 user.

[gchacks]

This issue is the place to gather feedback like this.

I use Windows 11 and use VCM a lot when using Zoom. I love the new feature where the display stays on when on mute AND off-MUTE. Please do not deprecate as it is a valuable feature. For Win11, you should look at how you could tap into the mute button displayed in the taskbar to mute/unmute. Currently this only works with MS-Teams but I believe it would VCM could be tweaked to enhance this capablity in Win 11

Also I just tested the global shortcut (win+alt+k) in windows 11 and it doe not work with zoom. You get a little pop-up that says "no supported apps in use for mic mute" for 2 secs and it disappears ...more reason NOT to deprecate VCM :)

[redlad]

What about Win10 users? They don't have the shortcut. I don't think removing the utility will make users happy.

Yes. totally agree. We would like to move to Win 11 but corporate world does not move that fast

[Ayandaftary]

Against the deprecation. The mic mute shortcut in Windows 11 is an opt-in from app developers, VCM was global and forced.

[bzzrak]

If nothing else, it could be released as a standalone app so that people don't have to keep old PT versions around if they need it.

[Armin2208]

You also don't remove Fancy Zones just because Windows 11 has now better window management. Conference Tool is a must have feature for PowerToys. The only app which supports Win + Alt + K is Microsoft Teams.

[AnonymousWP]

Lol, just now I wanted to start using VCM on my Windows 10 machine (I'm still on W10 for some more time), just because of the new 'hide when muted' feature. I really would like to use this feature on W10. What's the pain of keeping this feature for just W10 users? It probably requires a check though (code-related, to check whether the user is running W10 or W11, if that piece of code doesn't already exist).

[lezmaka]

Removing VCM completely because Windows 11 has a similar but worse feature doesn't make any sense, unless devs are planning on dropping support for Windows 10 outright. Might as well remove FancyZones, Image Resizer, Shortcut Guide and probably others since there's similar but worse ways to do some of that in Windows already.

[Jay-o-Way]

@crutkas @yuyoyuppe If VCM will be removed after v0.67 then it's too soon to actually close all VCM issues already. We can lock issues in the mean time

[Aaron-Junker]

You also don't remove Fancy Zones just because Windows 11 has now better window management. Conference Tool is a must have feature for PowerToys. The only app which supports Win + Alt + K is Microsoft Teams.

And unfortunately, even new MS teams does not support it

@blowsie Support for the mute button for the new Teams comes mid-April.

Message id: MC709270

Roadmap link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=191528

[mian196]

can we get this utility back, its really useful when you are on windows 10.

[Aaron-Junker]

can we get this utility back, its really useful when you are on windows 10.

It is not removed, just not supported anymore

[inuonly]

can we get this utility back, its really useful when you are on windows 10.

yes as someone explained, feature is not removed but further development is halted unless they think it is needed. i tried to raise an issue based on their statement somewhere saying bug reports are welcome but then quickly it was closed saying this is not a necessary bug fix needed. So unless they think something worth fixing, there is nothing moving on VCM wheel as of now.
I just keep getting notification for this thread and my false hope always rises just to hope that they start taking bug fixes for this but no luck for me yet. Unfortunately i am not lucky ones who can code so cannot fix myself. I guess people who wrote don't remove are just late like me to the party as "based on community feedback" time is over and we could not participate in that community event.

[mian196]

can we get this utility back, its really useful when you are on windows 10.

It is not removed, just not supported anymore

but it does not work , it says no camera found

[inuonly]

can we get this utility back, its really useful when you are on windows 10.

It is not removed, just not supported anymore

but it does not work , it says no camera found

not sure about the issue i am not a developer, but some people above said that they forgot to run power toys/VCM as administrator, can you try that , as for me I am running it on 3 separate hardware and it finds mic or camera respectively whichever is there. Again just trying to help, i dont know anything more than what you already might know. Good luck.
Ps: if it doesn't then try creating issue they might think it is worth fixing then they might fix this ( as per my last interaction to the devs / maintainers on my last issue created) .

[WIcheese]

I understand the reasoning behind this tool being deprecatred: it is focused on work (video conferences), it is useful to regular users, but requires local admin (which 99%+ of people, everyone outside IT, should not have on work devices), so it serves as a possible reason/excuse for reckless practices (end-users having admin).

Also, the reasoning for why it requires local admin makes sense - it affects input devices on a system-wide basis without other apps' voluntary cooperation, and isn't a built in system tool. This can't be done without admin.

The solution is that Windows needs a built in direct equivalent, where the user sitting at the physical console can mute all audio/video input (in a way that isn't up to the apps to comply with or not). This is a critical privacy feature, in addition to a corporate security issue. How fast can someone in cubicle-land without their own office kill their mic when someone in the next cubicle, who didn't know they are on an external call, starts discussing confidential info, and their video conferencing app is buried behind a dozen other windows? An operating system without a forced global mute is as safe as a phone you can't hang up in any timely manner.

A built-in global mute could be made to work without admin, just like the OS can allow an end-user to go into the settings and adjust Mic volumes to zero. The constraints that require admin only apply because it's not an OS component.

[ArianeBouchardConformit]

In case the issue where the new Teams app doesn't work with the global mute button is the reason you were looking into this, it seems it's in development. Currently they're planning to start rolling it out in June.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-GB/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=191528

Highly unpleasant that they're pressuring/forcing us to move to the new app already even though it's still lacking a basic feature, but it's more encouraging than nothing!

[Zebnastien]

Hi, and thanks for the amazing work.

Another feedback is VCM is useful because Windows 10 and 11 don't have system wide push-to-talk shortcut as far as I know.
I am using it everyday for all sorts of apps.

[Aronjlove]

Many of my work meetings have moved to new Microsoft Teams. I finally have a reason to use this feature, which works perfectly! I understand entirely focusing effort elsewhere but thank you for not removing it. New Microsoft Teams and the tray icon are in sync when using the mute mic and push-to-speak hotkeys.

[hoegge]

Will the feature finally be kept? Would be nice

[oscarstankard]

I second those comments stating that just because a similar feature exists in the OS doesn't mean there's not scope to maintain a more flexible/complete version in PowerToys, or that anything that requires admin permission must be removed? The thing is meant for power users, not just user level tools that have nothing similar available in the OS etc? I don't trust the various software makers to respect my button presses to mute mic/blank webcam, they (for example) provide access to the people paying the service provider to remotely unmute it etc? I've got a hardware control for my webcam so I can mute/blank that reliably, but when I'm using a bluetooth headset/4 pole headphones, having a global mute/blank function is very handy and a great assurance that you can safely visit the toilet etc without someone remotely unmuting your mic remotely etc 🤣.

[mainsm]

I think I will have to stop updating PowerToys if this feature is actually removed. A nice compromise would be to release the feature as a standalone application that can be installed beside PowerToys.

[spiralofhope]

@mainsm

I think I will have to stop updating PowerToys if this feature is actually removed.

The feature isn't being removed.

The only way it might be removed in the future is if it becomes incompatible with the latest updates of the various supported Windows', and nobody submits bug fixes.

There wouldn't be any concept of using an old copy to keep the feature, because the feature wouldn't work.

[timtucker]

As FYI for anyone looking for an alternative (admittedly a paid one), MuteDeck just got a lot closer to being a direct replacement for VCM.

They just released a new version this week that added the ability to set keyboard shortcuts for global audio / video mute:
https://mutedeck.com/blog/2024-10-14-mutedeck-v28-hotkeys-settings-loupedeck/

Still a few missing pieces (like hotkeys for "Push to Talk" or a combined "Mute Mic + Camera") that I posted requests for on their feedback tracker.

I'd started out using it in conjunction with VCM last year and for the past few months have been using it alone with VCM turned off.

Note that like VCM, it does still have the limitation that it can't listen to hotkeys that are pressed from within a Hyper-V VM. For that I have an AutoHotkey script that runs with admin privileges to catch commands. It was actually a little simpler to set that up with MuteDeck, since it has an API interface I can call directly with curl when I get a keypress event rather than needing jump through hoops to reissue keypress events on the host system.

[mainsm]

Note that like VCM, it does still have the limitation that it can't listen to hotkeys that are pressed from within a Hyper-V VM. For that I have an AutoHotkey script that runs with admin privileges to catch commands. It was actually a little simpler to set that up with MuteDeck, since it has an API interface I can call directly with curl when I get a keypress event rather than needing jump through hoops to reissue keypress events on the host system.

This is going a bit off topic from VCM, but would you be willing to share your AHK script that listens for your keypress and sends it back outside of the VM?

[timtucker]

@mainsm

This is going a bit off topic from VCM, but would you be willing to share your AHK script that listens for your keypress and sends it back outside of the VM?

I'm using a slightly modified version of this RDPHotkeyHelper script that passes media keys to the host:
https://github.com/neon-dev/RDPHotkeyHelper

That had a lot of stuff figured out already (like detecting when a VM is launched and rebinding keys so they still get captured), but all of the code for passing through keystrokes is based on single key events.

I ran into issues trying to come up with code to get key combinations to pass through and shelved the idea of using it for muting until I came across the MuteDeck API.

Here's the code that I'm using for calling MuteDeck (added right before the function definition for PassToLocalMachine):

; Control + Alt + Shift + A
^+!a::ToggleMute()
ToggleMute() {
	Run 'curl --silent -X POST http://localhost:3491/v1/mute', , "Hide"
}

If you wanted to adjust that to the same binding that VCM uses, you could use:

; Windows + Shift + A
#+A::ToggleMute()

As-is, it works OK with general RDP sessions to just drop it in a startup folder.

Hyper-V needs elevated privileges for intercepting key bindings, so I launch it via a Task Scheduler task with the following options:
General

• Run only when the user is logged on
• Run with highest privileges

Triggers

• At log on

Settings

• If task is already running, "Run a new instance in parallel" (the script is set up to run as a singleton so it doesn't matter if it gets relaunched)

[cinnamon-msft]

Closing in favor of #36339

[cblake777]

NO. Please do not close this in favor of REMOVING VIDEO CONFERENCE MUTE.

[sirmeili]

Please do not remove this. I use the Video mute portion of VCM every day! I get not wanting to maintain it, but why are you now removing it when this thread shows that there is a loyal user base for this functionality.

And before you say I can install it separately, I can't. Work has approved for me to install powerToys, but I can't just build the VCM on it's own and run it.

[kiddailey]

I've already said it as others have. Disappointing. I rely on this so much. It's the most reliable, consistent, elegant way I have found to mute across a multitude of apps.

[kiddailey]

And before you say I can install it separately, I can't. Work has approved for me to install powerToys, but I can't just build the VCM on it's own and run it.

@sirmeili Well said. It's really annoying when people assume you can just install any old software at will.

[chjohans]

@mainsm

I think I will have to stop updating PowerToys if this feature is actually removed.

The feature isn't being removed.

The only way it might be removed in the future is if it becomes incompatible with the latest updates of the various supported Windows', and nobody submits bug fixes.

There wouldn't be any concept of using an old copy to keep the feature, because the feature wouldn't work.

You obviously have too much faith in Microsoft.....