A Microsoft employee has designed a physical Mute button for the Teams desktop client, which will enable users to quickly mute/unmute themselves during meetings. Spotted by WalkingCat, Jennifer Fox, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, has published a handy guide to help users get a mute button up and running for their next meeting.
If you use the Microsoft Teams app, you’re probably familiar with the way it handles the mute function. The Teams client has a dedicated UI toggle button that allows users to mute/unmute their mics with a single tap. However, until now, controlling the mute status has been a nightmare for remote workers, mainly when Teams meetings include a ton of participants.
With this new Mute button, Teams users will be able to control their mute status with a quick access pushbutton. The button automatically triggers the “CTRL + Shift + M” hotkey, which activates the app’s mute/unmute function. However, it is important to note that the command will only work if the user is actively using Microsoft Teams. Here’s a video showing the Mute button in action on Microsoft Teams.
IoT enthusiasts will need a “Big Dome” pushbutton, a micro-USB cable, an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express (CPX), and a cardboard box to build this device. On the software front, the Arduino IDE (or VS Code w/ Arduino extension) is required to integrate with the hardware. The estimated cost and build time of the entire project are around $30 and 5 – 10 min.
If you’re interested, head over to the GitHub website to download the source code, and the instructions manual and deployment guide is available on this page. The company is also inviting developers to contribute to the open-source project, and you can read the full details at Microsoft by clicking here.
