Push-to-talk extenstion to Mic mute

[makonde-on-git]

Push-to-talk as a way of controlling the mic

It would be awesome if the new mic mute/unmute feature could be expanded to the "push-to-talk" functionality. We have many colleagues who are multitasking (who is not :P) during the meetings and the need to switch to teams/zoom/etc. unmute, comment, mute, go back to previous tasks, is so disruptive they often let it go. Push to talk would allow them to participate in the meetings and not require to "switch context" to do so.

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[enricogior]

@makonde-on-git
great idea, thank you for the suggestion.
Any suggestion for the UI? New icon in the toolbar along with the mic and camera currently present or just the mic icon that can be pressed and hold?

[enricogior]

@niels9001
we need a new icon for the mic to show that is in the press and hold state :)

[niels9001]

@makonde-on-git That's an awesome idea :)!

@enricogior - that would result in a lot of different .SVGs. (Because then we'd want to have a hover state as well, to indicate interactivity). I'm also wondering how this would work. Single click is toggling? Long-press is push-to-talk? Maybe we'd need a third button?

Some related questions:

• Is there a (feasible) possibility to move to WinUI (or WPF for now) so we can update things faster and provide additional functionality (e.g. moving the toolbar around?). I can imagine this might be some work.
• If not, can we split up the microphone and camera .SVGs and put them next to eachother in code? This way we don't need to draw all combinations?

[enricogior]

@niels9001

Is there a (feasible) possibility to move to WinUI (or WPF for now)

No.

can we split up the microphone and camera .SVGs

Yes sure.

[enricogior]

@niels9001

Maybe we'd need a third button?

Probably, even though I'd like the idea to keep the toolbar at a minimum if possible, but only if it's not detrimental to the UX.

[niels9001]

Posting this as inspiration: this is the new voice UI in the latest Windows Insider release.

[ollyau]

Would it also be possible to have a key or shortcut to use for push to talk (where the mic is only unmuted for the duration that the key press is held down), in addition to the mouse click based UI suggested above?

[makonde-on-git]

@ollyau that was my original intention - user defined keyboard shortcut to activate the mic when keeped pressed. Thanks for bringing this up as actually not everyone needs to be a gamer with push-to-talk already binded in the muscle memory ;)

[enricogior]

@ollyau @makonde-on-git
good idea!

[dciborow]

Seems like the deal for Discord fell threw with Microsoft, thought that was going to be how i got my push to talk in Teams.

This seems like my last shot!

[davconde]

Would be awesome if this could be implemented. People with social anxiety tend to be very conscious of not letting their mic open. I think this would be a very good workaround to not having to keep it open in any meeting client for small interventions.

[crutkas]

I don't think we'll be fixing this due to #21473 and will be removing VCM in the pending future with Win11 having the muting feature.