MicSwitch

If you’ve played any game that supports voice chat, you’re likely all too familiar with the background noise and random conversations you hear from people who forget their microphone is still on.

Windows doesn’t offer an easy way to mute and unmute your microphone, so users have to rely on the functions offered by apps or games. MicSwitch is a small program that provides you with a global hotkey for turning your microphone on or off, as well as an overlay to track its status.

After installing MicSwitch, you just need to launch it and set your preferred hotkeys for toggling microphone input. You can also enable push-to-talk, in which case the mic will only capture audio while the selected key is pressed.

The hotkeys will work even after you’ve sent MicSwitch to the system tray, regardless of which application is in the foreground. Oddly enough, though, they don’t seem to work when the desktop is selected.

You can disable the overlay if you find that it’s not necessary, but it can definitely prove helpful. It makes it easy to keep track of when the mic is active, and you can make it as tiny as you want, as well as translucent.

The audio notifications might not seem all that necessary, but they provide extra confirmation that the mic has really been turned on or off. You can choose from multiple alert sounds for muting and unmuting the device.

The application can be sent to the system tray after configuring the settings, and the global hotkeys will continue to be active. After closing it, however, your settings do not seem to be carried over to the next launch.

While it does need some more fine-tuning, MicSwitch can definitely help you keep our microphone in check, offering a simple way to turn it on or off and monitor its status.