New feature idea: display audio input loudness

[karlbecker]

Hello!

Loving this utility, and appreciate its focus to do one thing. Something I think would complement its mission quite nicely is the ability to see what the current input loudness is, so that I could better know when I should mute.

For instance, is the mic (whichever mic I have active - a headset, the built-in, etc) picking up my typing? If so, whoops, better mute. If we show how loud the input is detecting audio, I could quickly see the bar jumping a little bit with every tap, and see, "oh hey, it's picking up my little taps... mute time."

If I'm in a coffee shop, how loud is the noise around me? It's best to be muted when I'm not talking regardless if I'm in a public place, but if I can see the input loudness, I'll also know how loud the background noise is when I do talk. It would be great if I could change the audio input level, too - perhaps with a tap and hold on it.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. I am a developer so I could contribute some of these changes, too, but wanted to run this idea by to see what the pixel-point team thought.

One question I have no idea about because I've never made something for the Touch Bar before: can we have an icon that's constantly changing its picture in this spot on the Touch Bar? The audio loudness would be constantly changing, and I'd want not too much lag to display it, though perhaps we wouldn't need a full 60 fps.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[lnikell]

@karlbecker actually great idea

can we have an icon that's constantly changing its picture in this spot on the Touch Bar? The audio loudness would be constantly changing, and I'd want not too much lag to display it, though perhaps we wouldn't need a full 60 fps.

Good question, I think it's possible

[jcharnet]

Awesome idea. And to go along, when unmuting, instead of having the loudness bar to the max, shouldn't it persist where it was when muting and go back to that state when unmute?
Example:
I have the loudness of my mic set to 3, when I mute it goes to 0, when I unmute it goes to 10.
It should go back to 3 instead of 10.

[lnikell]

@jcharnet good point, we will try to change it soon

[lnikell]

@jcharnet We implemented this functionality in the new version which currently we distribute as a separate application https://mutify.app/.

You can try it for free with 7-days trial and get 50% discount with promo code: MUTEME

However, the existing opensource version will stay forever free.

[ImBIOS]

@karlbecker I voluntarily maintain this repository here: https://github.com/ImBIOS/mute-me