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Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

unclack.app

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Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#151

The sentence explaining what it does has a typo which makes it confusing: > Unclack is the small but mighty Mac utility that mutes your keyboard while you type. This should say "mutes your _microphone_ while you type". You can't mute a keyboard

in addition to what everyone else said about muting a microphone being a totally legit thing in English, you _can_ mute a keyboard. For example, adding soft foam to soften the hit when it bottoms out would mute your keyboard somewhat. Obviously this app doesn't "mute the keyboard" but since we're being pedantic, it's not accurate to say it can't be done.

keep in mind mute does not only mean "to silence" (verb form). It's also "deaden, muffle, or soften the sound of."

So, practically speaking, there are very few physical objects that produce sound that can't be muted.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#153
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For folks like me who _had_ to hear this in action: https://youtu.be/Y7dKyGoqn9w?t=30

It would be awesome if this app provided a toggle you could click that would scramble/unscramble the sounds while you're entering passwords, that way evedroppers can't get anything meaningful (other than your password length)

“To temporarily silence bucklespring, for example to enter secrets, press ScrollLock twice (but be aware that those ScrollLock events are delivered to the application); same to unmute. The keycode for muting can be changed with the -m option. Use keycode 0 to disable the mute function.” — the paragraph after the section quoted in my OP.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#155
post #7

A solution like rtx voice seems a better way to go tbh. For those who don't know, it's an nvidia thing that uses a GPU accelerated (ofc, it's nvidia) neural network to denoise voice calls, from all kinds of noise, not just typing. It's really pretty impressive, here's a demo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE I wish it wasn't proprietary though (and worse, hardware specific). And windows only of course.

Only it's not a 'better way to go' because the thing doesn't work on the hardware this post is directly aimed at.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may still not prevent Cherry MX blues from being picked up by the microphone

Topre, my dude!

Hey some of us like the clicky-clack! I optimize around the most common use case, which is me, at home, in my home office. This predates the pandemic and I fully intend it to postdate it as well.

I don't mind a little Foley on a call; I'm either muted anyway, or it doesn't matter. There must be people out there who can type and talk at the same time, but I never got the hang of it.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#158
Oh man. I literally wrote a utility for OS X that does exactly this, in Swift, 6 years ago, as a test project to get my feet wet in that environment.

https://github.com/orospakr/suppressor

I don't imagine it still builds. Perhaps I should have followed through with it!

Congrats to the author.

Re: Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type

#159
post #18

For the opposite effect, install `bucklespring` to enjoy an authentic classic clacking on any keyboard (most convenient on GNU/Linux, packaged for the biggest distros). “This project emulates the sound of my old faithful IBM Model-M space saver bucklespring keyboard while typing on my notebook, mainly for the purpose of annoying the [heck] out of my coworkers. Bucklespring runs as a background process and plays back…

Man, this is brilliant. Would do nicely on zoom walkthroughs or instructional videos (both of which I'm doing more of these days).
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