Push to talk on Windows, for every app at once
Push to talk is usually a setting inside one voice app. Join a meeting in a second program, start a recording, or open a game with its own chat, and each has its own key, or none at all. Windows itself does not offer a push-to-talk key for the whole system.
This app works one level lower. It mutes and unmutes the Windows recording device, so every program using that microphone gets the same answer at the same moment. Hold F9, the default, and they all hear you; let go and they all get silence.
Because the mute is the system's own, it also stays in sync the other way. If a headset button or a meeting app flips the mute, the app notices and its lamp follows.
Three push-to-talk modes
The three mode buttons under the lamp decide what your key means:
- Hold to talk: muted until you hold the key. The microphone is closed as soon as the app opens, and with Start with Windows on it is closed from sign-in, before you join anything.
- Hold to mute: the reverse. The microphone is open, and the key cuts you off for a cough, a sip of water or a word to someone in the room.
- Tap to toggle: every press alternates between on air and off air, for long stretches of talking without holding anything.
How to set a keyboard shortcut to mute your mic
Click the key cap in the middle of the main window. It reads Press a key; press the key or combination you want, or Esc to cancel. A single key works, and so do combinations with Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Win.
The key is not swallowed, so it still reaches whatever program is in front. Pick a letter or the space bar and the window tells you This key still types. An F key is safer, because a function key rarely does anything in a call or a game.
A live microphone indicator you can trust
The main window is built around a studio tally lamp. It lights red and reads ON AIR when you can be heard and OFF AIR when it is closed, and a ring around it tracks the level the microphone is picking up. Click the lamp itself to flip the mute by hand.
Show the on-air pill puts a small click-through pill along the upper edge of whichever monitor you are working on, above any app. In the hold modes it stays up exactly as long as the key is down; in Tap to toggle it flashes. Radio chirp adds a rising blip when you go live and a falling one when you are cut, so you can hear the state without looking.
Choosing the microphone and its input level
The bar along the bottom of the window lists your recording devices and sets the input volume of the one selected, from 0 to 100%. If the chosen microphone is unplugged, control moves to the Windows default device, and if no microphone exists at all the lamp reads NO MIC.
