PowerToys 0.28 is out, includes Video Conference Muting

Microsoft has released PowerToys 0.28. It is an experimental app version that contains the Video conference mute in addition to what was included in version 0.27.0. The release notes also point to a few known issues in the release.

Video Conference Mute Tool

This utility will mute not just your audio but your video as well with a single keystroke. You can do audio, video both. Microsoft considers the ability to quickly mute while on a conference call is critical regardless of where you are on your computer.

Usage

• Win+N to toggle both Audio and Video at the same time
• Win+Shift+O to toggle video
• Win+Shift+A to toggle microphone

When the camera is in use, you'll see the following dialog on where you set it on your screen to get your state. With a quick click or a keystroke, your state will be updated.

To have the camera set, all you need to do is select the PowerToys camera. It also includes a number of other settings.

To mute audio or video, the tool does the following.

• Audio: PowerToys uses global microphone mute API in Windows. Apps should recover when this is toggled on and off.
• Video: PowerToys has a virtual driver for the webcam. It routes the video through the driver and back to the application. When a user tells the app to stop broadcasting the video, it stops streaming. The application itself still thinks it is getting video except all it is getting is a stream of black. When you toggle the stream back on, the driver just restores the actual video stream.

Here's what's new in PowerToys 0.28

Features added:

• The Video Conference Mute tool is included.
• An optional image overlay for the video

Things to note

• This release will not be on WinGet due to the driver still prompting for permission during install time.
• This release is on the "Experimental" train, so only prerelease versions will be prompted for updates.

Download PowerToys

You can download the app from its Releases page on GitHub:

Download PowerToys

PowerToys apps

As of now, Windows 10 PowerToys include the following apps.

• [a work-in-progress] Screen Recoder - The new tool will allow the user to record an app of a screen portion, and save the recording to a file . It will include an option to create a GIF animation from what the user captured. Some other features include the ability to trim the capture, and set video/GIF quality.
• Video Conference Mute tool - an experimental tool that allows muting both audio and video on your computer with a single keystroke or click.
• ColorPicker - a simple and quick system-wide color picker that allows you to get the color value at any point of what you see on the screen.
• PowerRename - a tool that is intended to help you rename a large number of files using various naming conditions like search and replace a portion of the file name, define regular expressions, change letter case, and more. PowerRename is implemented as a shell extension for File Explorer (read plugin). It opens a dialog box with a bunch of options.
• FancyZones - FancyZones is a window manager that is designed to make it easy to arrange and snap windows into efficient layouts for your workflow, and also to restore these layouts quickly. FancyZones allows the user to define a set of window locations for a desktop that are drag targets for windows. When the user drags a window into a zone, the window is resized and repositioned to fill that zone.
• Windows key shortcut guide - The Windows key shortcut guide is a full screen overlay utility that provides a dynamic set of Windows key shortcuts that are applicable for the given desktop and currently active window. When the Windows key is held down for one second, (this time can be tuned in settings), an overlay appears on the desktop showing all available Windows key shortcuts and what action those shortcuts will take given the current state of the desktop and active window. If the Windows key continues to be held down after a shortcut is issued, the overlay will remain up and show the new state of the active window.
• Image Resizer, a Windows Shell Extension for quickly resizing images.
• File Explorer - a set of addons for File Explorer. Currently includes two Preview Pane additions to show contents of *.MD and *.SVG files.
• Window Walker is an app that lets you search and switch between windows that you have open, all from the comfort of your keyboard.
• PowerToys Run, provides a new Run command with extra options like quick search for apps, files, and docs. It supports extensions to get features like a calculator, dictionaries, nd online search engines.
• Keyboard Manager is a tool that allows remapping any key to a different function. It can be configured in the main PowerToys dialog.It allows you to remap a single key, or a key sequence (shortcut).