Alongside the design tweaks, PowerToys is also getting two new features with this 0.49 version update. Video Conference Mute debuts with this release, a feature that lets you mute your microphone or disable your webcam globally across Windows 10 or Windows 11.
You can bind Video Conference Mute to a keyboard shortcut, and pick the webcam and microphone you’d like to disable. There’s even a toolbar that appears when a webcam or microphone is in use. Microsoft had been planning to launch Windows 11 with its own universal microphone mute button, but this feature didn’t make the release and should be coming at some point in the future.
Tom Warren
I have paid little attention to PowerToys since the initial release because I didn’t find much use for its range of small utilities, with the exception of Image Resizer – it’s perplexing how after decades of development Windows doesn’t have such a basic feature built-in, and starting the Photos app for a simple resizing seems excessive. But the addition of Video Conference Mute suddenly made it a lot more useful, especially since I was able to install PowerToys on my current work laptop. The company is using Teams and Zoom in parallel, so it’s easier to remember a single keyboard shortcut for muting your microphone. On top of that, this utility can mute/unmute while the conference app is not in focus, so you can continue working during the meeting if you choose to, and quickly get back into the conversation when needed without scrambling to return to the right window and click the right button.
The other half of this feature, globally disabling the webcam, comes with an unexpected and exciting twist: instead of broadcasting a blank black image when turning off the video stream, there’s an option to replace the video feed with a static image! My first thought when I saw this was: so, I can put up a photo of me looking at the camera to make people think I’m present, while I do my own stuff offscreen?! It turns out that… yes, that totally works! I tested it with a friend and a self-portrait taken on my smartphone, so it was rather obvious from the image quality and lighting that it wasn’t live.
I naturally don’t recommend trying this in a business setting – if someone looks at your thumbnail for a while longer it would become noticeable that something is off, and treating colleagues like this is very insensitive. But in some specific situations the feature could prove convenient: for example, if you are delivering a presentation or training you could prepare a static slide with the title and your contact details and leave it on screen during breaks or before the presentation starts.
After this small discovery reignited my interest, I have come to appreciate some of the other utilities more. PowerRename is powerful, in the few cases I wind up using it. The Mouse utilities could also come in handy when presenting as a virtual indicator of the cursor. And preventing the laptop from going to sleep with Awake is a great tool during long Windows updates (which for me is basically every one, as my personal laptop has a hard disk drive), otherwise the download or install process keeps getting interrupted.
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