Video Conference Mute (VCM) Feature Request

[Eng-Ahmed-Rifai]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Dear Developers,

The Video Conference Mute feature was removed in PowerToys version 0.88.0. I would like to request that this feature be reinstated or that an alternative solution be provided. This feature was a very helpful tool for me, allowing me to quickly mute my microphone and turn off my camera during calls.

Could you please provide some insight into why this feature was deprecated and removed? I'd appreciate any information you can share about the reasoning behind this decision and if there are any plans to reintroduce or replace this feature in future versions.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Scenario when this would be used?

This feature was a very helpful tool for me, allowing me to quickly mute my microphone and turn off my camera.

Supporting information

No response

[similar-issues-ai]

We've found some similar issues:

• Why Was Video Conference Mute Deprecated? #37126 , similarity score: 87%
• Video Conference Mute #37141 , similarity score: 82%

If any of the above are duplicates, please consider closing this issue out and adding additional context in the original issue.

Note: You can give me feedback by 👍 or 👎 this comment.

[crutkas]

I made the decision to pull it. Almost all the same reasons held for why we wanted to do it back with 0.67 still hold true. It is very difficult to test, debug in general, different webcam hardware caused issues, Arm64 quirks, had accessibility issues, it actually is x86 vs 64-bit, and extremely low usage from telemetry compared to other PowerToys utilities. The complexities of the virtual driver added to installing, upgrading, and uninstalling PowerToys also added to my decision.

I do know it does actively impact those who did that and usage is usage. As a user, you have choices and we respect that. Our team cares deeply about users and giving everyone extremely powerful utilities.

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.