Push to talk microphone with Pulseaudio

README.md

Microphone PTT for Pulseaudio

This tool helps you with many absolutely proprietary software which doesn't include proper push-to-talk key. I wrote this with Google Meet in mind but is also useful for many other browser based apps as well.

Like this? Support me at Github!

Installation

First, install requirements and symlink the configuration file.

sudo apt install xbindkeys
ln -s `readlink -f xbindkeysrc` ~/.xbindkeysrc

If you already have xbindkeys setup, just concatenate the contents to your main config.

Then make xbindkeys to autostart on login:

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart-scripts/
ln -s /usr/bin/xbindkeys ~/.config/autostart-scripts

Customization

Edit attached xbindkeysrc file to match your needs:

PTT button

Default: Caps lock

Change c:66 to the key name you want to use as PTT key. To get name of your key, run:

xbindkeys -k -f /dev/null

Microphone

If you want to control a specific mic instead of default one, replace @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ with Pulseaudio sink name. To get list input device names, run:

pactl list short sources | cut -f 2

xbindkeysrc

# -*- shell-script -*-
#
# To use this, make xbindkeys start on login and symlink this file to
# ~/.xbindkeysrc

"pactl set-source-mute @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ 0"
  c:66

"pactl set-source-mute @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ 1"
  release+c:66