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Show HN: Unclack – a macOS app that mutes your microphone while you type
- EE84M3i 6y agoThis made me do a double take: "The key board on Macs has artificial clacking?" but of course this actually mutes your microphone, not your keyboard.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- eloeffler 6y agoI thought the same thing! :'D Thanks for enlightening me
- SamBam 6y agoI was very confused as well, since that's exactly what it sounded like. That said, I wouldn't have been surprised at all. I was never more shocked that when I discovered that the trackpad on my MacBook Pro didn't actually buckle a millimeter, and was instead entirely simulated by the haptic feedback. Mind. Blown.
- chris_st 6y agoI had a similar experience with my iPhone 7+. I had forgotten I'd turned it off. I picked it up, and wondered if the home button was broken, because it wasn't moving when I pressed it. Then I realized it was off, and had that OH YEAH, it's just a sensor with haptic feedback... pretty amazing!
- WanderPanda 6y agoYeah, that feeling still does not go away for me. It really feels like the phone is dead, when it is off / the battery is actually dead
- srtjstjsj 6y agoAlthough Force Touch is simulated clicking, the trackpad does flex slightly when pressed hard. It doesn't depress as a button, but it doesn't maintain rigid position. I don't know if it's intentional or just weak metal, but it's good because it relieves pressure on fingers.
- aasasd 6y agoRelated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundaktor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundaktor
- steerablesafe 6y agoCertain model M keyboards have speakers in them, possibly for audio feedback for the otherwise quiet keyboard. /s
- srtjstjsj 6y agoPlease don't post sarcasm. You can make an equivalent statement ("it almost seems...", "I can imagine...") without the needless twist into a false/sarcastic formulation that just makes your post needlessly harder to understand.
- gxnxcxcx 6y agoGood thing "/s" tagged remarks barely qualify as sarcasm, then.
- glhaynes 6y agoHaven't used a Model M in 25 years but this comment brought me back to that time, wondering what the apparent speaker grill underneath was. For those who are also curious, here's what Wikipedia says: >Until the late 4th-generation variants, most Model Ms have a 1.25" slotted, circular speaker grille in their bottom surfaces. Relatively few contain an actual speaker, however, which was useful only for sounding beep codes on older terminal systems. The most common P/Ns with speakers are 1394540 and 51G872, made for RS/6000 UNIX workstations.
- imhoguy 6y agoI have thought it silences keyboard in a room completely with some active noise canceling magic. Such would be helpful to not wake up my spouse at night.
- matsemann 6y agoMy mouse only has artificial clicking. It's a rollermouse without any real click in the roller-bar. It's quite trippy to disable the clicking-sound, suddenly it doesn't feel like I'm actually pressing the bar. But with sound it feels like I have haptic feedback. I think the trackpad on my previous mac was similar? Or, it had haptic feedback, but it was artificial and could be tweaked in SW.
- robotsquidward 6y agoYeah, a little confusing. I updated the text on the Unclack landing page to specify that it mutes your microphone, not your keyboard. Appreciate the feedback!
- joelschw 6y agoIs it Big Sur only?
- JosephRedfern 6y agoAccording to the FAQ, yes: https://unclack.app/faq/#/ https://unclack.app/faq/#/
- joelschw 6y agoDarn
- henryackerman 6y agoIndeed.
- m000 6y agoHuge bummer. It would be nice though if the FAQ included a short technical explanation for this limitation, similar to how it explains "Why does Unclack need Accessibility access?".
- mrtranscendence 6y agoThat's definitely a bummer. On my work laptop I'm stuck on Catalina for the foreseeable future, and that's where this app would be useful. Presumably most people using macs for work aren't on Big Sur yet.
- num 6y agoI'm speculating here, but maybe there are better controls in Big Sur to easily mute input devices compared to prior versions of OSX. I've attempted building a global microphone mute app (for external microphones) on Catalina but never found an easy way to fully mute all mics such as external USB mics or a those connected through a USB ADC. The best I could get on Catalina was to lower the inputVolume to 0 which does not truly mute the microphone. I never found an app that "solved" this problem for all microphones on OSX versions prior to Big Sur.
- 6y ago
- interactivecode 6y agoA bit silly but does anyone know what editor app is shown in this gif[0]? [0] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robotsquidward/gifs/master/unclack-pause-demo.gif https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robotsquidward/gifs/master...
- JosephRedfern 6y agoI wondered the same. It looks a bit like Typora, but I think it's something else...
- daysm 6y agoYeah looks very similar to Typora, but that's not it
- dubcanada 6y agoMy guess would be Typora with a dark mode theme/few customizations. Most of the other Mac markdown editors either have it split into two panes, show the markdown syntax when you type or don't look like that (centered).
- vonseel 6y agoMaybe marked
- replwoacause 6y agoPossibly Caret? https://caret.io/ https://caret.io/
- replwoacause 6y agoActually it may be Paper: https://papereditor.app https://papereditor.app
- faizshah 6y agoThis is genius but I usually mute myself before and after speaking. Great idea though for us mechanical switch folks.
- gbil 6y agoI use Mute Me[1] for this with the shortcut in the Touch Bar to mute and unmute quickly. I'm not sure if Unclack offers a Touch Bar shortcut (or keyboard shortcute) because reaching out to the Menu bar all the time is annoying [1] https://github.com/pixel-point/mute-me https://github.com/pixel-point/mute-me
- thinkmassive 6y agoZoom makes this easy with spacebar as push-to-talk button https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360000510003-Push-to-Talk https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360000510003-Push-...
- trungdq88 6y agoSpace bar as push to talk in Zoom is terrible. After countless time it sends the spaces to the chat box while I'm talking, I'm now back to reliable mouse click.
- walshemj 6y agoOr use a very directional mic/head set
- wheybags 6y agoA 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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUHkCgslNE I wish it wasn't proprietary though (and worse, hardware specific). And windows only of course.
- dschu 6y agoKrisp uses ML to remove background noises like dog barking, crispy chips and such. Comes with a subscription model for unlimited use though. https://krisp.ai/ https://krisp.ai/
- newsbinator 6y agoI had people complain they couldn't hear me well when I used their (deprecated) iOS app. I kept having to turn off the ML noise-cancelling.
- dschu 6y agoHave you used the internal mic? I found out that if the phone is too far away, the voice would flagged as ‚background chatting‘ and therefore muted. Once I connected a headset those issues went away.
- newsbinator 6y agoI was using standard corded iPhone earpods.
- whymarrh 6y agoI had similar issues with their macOS app using a pretty basic headphone+microphone setup (EarPods). I ended up leaving it off and not re-installing in on my latest setup. I've had a subscription from mid-2019, though I no longer use it. I find Zoom's basic noise suppression good enough for calls.
- pluc 6y agoYou already have a mute button.. do you really want to deal with unplanned un-muting as opposed to planned muting?
- ldjb 6y agoPresumably this doesn't affect muting on Teams, Zoom or whatever videoconferencing software you're using, so it couldn't unmute you.
- vehemenz 6y agoA global keyboard shortcut to mute your mic would probably be best, but otherwise system mute is not easily accessible in MacOS. The Command+Shift+M shortcut for mute in WebEx/Team/Zoom requires focus, which you most likely won't have if you're typing something.
- smcleod 6y agoIf you have a MacBook with a touchback you can add a mute mic button directly on it (You can an make a script that executes or use Mutify).
- Hnrobert42 6y agoYou do not have a hardware mute button. There is an output mute, but not an input mute. I wrote one in about 10 lines of AppleScript and associated it with a hot key. It ~mostly~ works. If you are talking about the application-specific software mute, I had such a terrible time finding it amongst all my open tabs and latency every time I wanted to type or speak that I wrote the above hardware-ish button.
- boogies 6y agoFor 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 the sound of each key pressed and released on your keyboard, just as if you were using an IBM Model-M. The sound of each key has carefully been sampled, and is played back while simulating the proper distance and direction for a realistic 3D sound palette of pure nostalgic bliss” — https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring
- jcun4128 6y agohmm acquired taste perhaps https://youtu.be/21AuWT1lDMc?t=13 https://youtu.be/21AuWT1lDMc?t=13 although not sure if same sound as the repo you linked though I do use a mechanical keyboard at home
- kiddico 6y agoThe options returned from -h match that repo[0] so I'd assume they're the same. [0] https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring/blob/master/main.c#L81 https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring/blob/master/main.c#L81
- karmakaze 6y agoOh I loved my Model-M Space Saver, collected quite a few of them. Co-workers did sometimes comment/complain but not that often. I also had this habit of moving my cursor keys up/down/left/right in rapid/slow movements while I was thinking deeply on a problem. Combined with how loud and that it clicks on each downpress and clacks on release was quite the cacophony.
- avh02 6y ago> I also had this habit of moving my cursor keys up/down/left/right in rapid/slow movements while I was thinking deeply on a problem. the human HDD activity light
- mparramon 6y agoBeautiful homepage, great app UX so far. Will give it a try on my next call. Thanks a lot OP!
- smcleod 6y agoFor anyone that's tried them both - how does it compare to krisp.ai? I've been using Krisp since the start of 2020 and have been really happy with both its audio performance and that it doesn't seem to use excessive CPU/GPU, not to mention that it doesn't require nvidia hardware. Krisp is a paid, closed source product however.
- apetresc 6y agoI'm almost certain that Unclack isn't doing any audio-processing magic. It simply knows when you're typing because, you know, keyboard are part of your computer, and mutes when enough keys are pressed in a short enough window of time. It shouldn't use any significant resources at all.
- robotsquidward 6y agoYeah I can confirm haha. It's dead simple, but also hopefully has the benefit of that simplicity on your performance.
- smcleod 6y agoOh, that's disappointing, I'm often talking while typing to take notes.
- rickyc091 6y agoAnyone know of a big overlay that stays in the foreground lets you know if you're muted/muted?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoOnly application specific; Zoom will give you a notification if it detects noise (e.g. you speaking) while muted.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoIt doesn't "mute your keyboard" it "mutes everything" which isn't very useful in a meeting.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoHow often are you typing and speaking at the same time though? I’m not talented enough to do that, personally. :) I think this app is really clever. I would definitely use it if my version of macOS wasn’t nearly a decade too old.
- throwaway12757 6y agoHmm.. I type and talk at the same time. It's not all the time, but I talk in meeting while I'm still typing the last part of my sentence.
- sgustard 6y agoI may not type, but I certainly shift-tab while I talk and need to reference something in another window.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoHm... I suppose it depends on what this app's threshold is muting the mic...
- mbreese 6y agoIt’s useful if you are able to stop typing when you need to talk.
- cmiller1 6y agoHere's a tip from people I know that do streaming from their computer: get the microphone off your desk. Find something else to put it on or buy an arm it can attach to. The fact that your device or mic are sitting on your desk where the keyboard clack vibrations are traveling right through amplifies them.
- linux2647 6y agoThat may still not prevent Cherry MX blues from being picked up by the microphone
- QuadDamaged 6y agoTopre, my dude!
- kitsunesoba 6y agoTopre is indeed great. The HHKB Pro 2/3 makes an excellent office/WFH board because it's tactile while being relatively silent. Feels nice to use without making a ton of noise.
- samatman 6y agoHey 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.
- vestrigi 6y agoAlso really improves the microphone placing problem. On the desk my microphone would always be in my hands way or in front of the monitor and the cable was annoying too. I built a cheap microphone arm out of an Ikea swinging desk lamp (Tertial). It required some time but was a fun project and now I have a matching arm to my desk lamp.
- 6y ago
- oceliker 6y agoI thought this was going to be an app that emits some kind of inverse sound through the laptop speakers to neutralize the keypress sound in real life. I wonder if that's possible.
- DontGiveTwoFlux 6y agoUnfortunately the percussive clacks from a keyboard are probably too broad spectrum to neutralize. These transient waveforms are hard to beat.
- robertlagrant 6y agoBudum-tish.
- sjwright 6y agoYou'd be amazed what can be done with the latest machine learning algorithms. But setting those aside, you could still get 90% of the way with some relatively basic stuff. I'd start by identifying the presence of speech—when the user isn't currently speaking, trivial muting is all that's needed. Then the only challenge would be to squelch keyboard noise that overlaps speech. If keyboard input monitoring has enough temporal precision, even the most trivial volume dip (and perhaps a band pass filter) would be a win. Keyboard input monitoring could also be used to continuously tune the algorithm to the loudness of the keyboard noise. Any key press occurring in sonic isolation could be used. Then when there's keyboard noise which overlaps speech, the algorithm will know how much to squelch.
- nt2h9uh238h 6y agoMe too. I still have no idea what this thing is doing. An excellent example for a poorly written landing page.
- robertlagrant 6y agoIt says it mutes the mic while you type.
- deleted 6y ago
- rjmunro 6y agoWhen I downloaded it the DMG file was 12.2Mb. I was suspicious of why an app this small in function would require such a large download, and looked inside, but the actual contents was only 1.4Mb, half of which was icons etc., which seems much more reasonable. If I right click on Unclack.app and choose "compress", I get a file under 1Mb in size. Does this always happen with DMG files, or is there something weird going on here? This file is 10× bigger than it could be.
- michelb 6y agoThe minimum size for an empty DMG I could create on my mac was 8Mb. If I make the DMG directly from the folder with the app in it, it becomes 1.2Mb. Maybe the developer uses a script that makes it this size.
- kccqzy 6y agoDMGs are essentially disk images. So there's a lot of metadata there, inherent to the file system (HFS+ here but any file system would have metadata). Not to mention, there could be plenty of empty space if the virtual disk is bigger than the contained files. DMG compression is also optional, so not everyone compresses them. The DMG in this case is clearly not compressed. Compressing the DMG itself results in a file less than a megabyte.
- rasfincher 6y agoI can't believe this just appeared on the front page. A co-worker and I were just talking about this happening on calls. I'm going to send this to a few people unsolicited.
- C4K3 6y agoI wish push-to-talk was more common. On linux I've been using this little python script that implements global push-to-talk by (un)muting the microphone in pulseaudio when you push a button. https://gitlab.com/somini/inpulse-to-talk https://gitlab.com/somini/inpulse-to-talk Time to see if there's something equivalent for mac.
- hesk 6y agoOn Zoom, you can push to talk by pressing the space bar. Yes, this advice is Zoom-centric but the app calls out Zoom in the first sentence on the page, so I think it's fair.
- fastball 6y agoWe use discord for our company voice chat and you can easily enable push-to-talk if that's what you prefer.
- MikeIkerson 6y agoShush: https://mizage.com/shush/ https://mizage.com/shush/
- JamesMcMinn 6y agoAfter seeing this and being a bit disappointed it was for Mac only, I wrote a very quick and dirty script for Linux that does something similar [1]. Probably has lots of bugs and missed edge cases (although it should handle not unmuting you if you mute yourself), but was fun to write none the less and might be useful. If you want to play it, please have a read before using it (it has to capture key presses using xinput but does nothing with actual key values) and I won't accept any responsibility if it mutes / unmutes you at an inopportune time, etc. [1] https://pastebin.com/CRuLWjzr https://pastebin.com/CRuLWjzr
- shawabawa3 6y agoThe 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
- hammock 6y agoColloquially we say "mute yourself" or "mute this or that person," so it functions in that context.
- milansm 6y agoIn that case, “mutes yourself” would be more appropriate.
- boxed 6y agoNot colloquially. That's correct. Muting a mic is the colloquial expression. Think about what the word means: silence a thing. The mic does not make a sound.
- fastball 6y agoBut you're not muting the keyboard, you're muting everything.
- boxed 6y agoYou can't mute a microphone. Mute is when something can't make a sound. You put a mic on mute. So no, the text is correct. But obviously it's wrong. It doesn't ONLY mute the keyboard, it mutes everything for the person typing. The keyboard, the person, the squeaking chair.
- machello13 6y agoYou can absolutely mute a microphone, since you can say "I muted my microphone" and any English speaker will understand exactly what you mean. edit: in fact I would go so far as to say that the majority of English speakers, at least here in America, would prefer saying "mute the mic" instead "put the mic on mute" (I've never heard anyone say the latter in actual conversation, to be honest).
- theli0nheart 6y agoDoes Zoom does this automatically? I hardly ever hear keyboard sounds during video calls.
- johnbellone 6y agoDude, take my money.
- Redploy 6y agoContact Redploy4000@gmail.com if you're looking for a skilled, quick, reliable and confident ethical hacker or programmer.
- anvarik 6y agohmm why can't i open the dmg? i'm on big sur
- refulgentis 6y agoSad to hear macOS lets apps snoop on my keystrokes.
- shadykiller 6y agoI thought this mutes(disables) the inbuilt keyboard on my macbook. Would be super helpful for me since my son randomly presses key on my macbook keyboard while I'm trying to type from my external keyboard. Still, a slick utility. Good luck !!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- layer8 6y agoSo, people will instead see your mute indicator flicker haphazardly while you’re typing. ;)
- robotsquidward 6y agoHaha Unclack actually does let you configure the Menu Bar icon and mute indicator appearance, including being able to disable the mute indicator altogether! :)
- layer8 6y agoI meant the mute indicator in the video-conferencing app. :) At least in some apps participants can see for each participant whether they are muted or not.
- robotsquidward 6y agoOverwhelmed by your feedback & support! If anyone wants to follow Unclack on Product Hunt, you can check it out here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/unclack-for-macos https://www.producthunt.com/posts/unclack-for-macos
- breakfastduck 6y agoThis is a god send. What a great little tool. I am constantly being berated by colleagues when I start loudly typing on my mechanical keyboard without thinking...
- stevebmark 6y agoAs well you should be, loud typing is disrespectful and distracting in any environment.
- breakfastduck 6y agoTotally agree, I don't have anywhere near as loud a keyboard in the office so only been a problem since working from home. Easy to forget you're not muted on a call and start typing a reply to something else - not trying to suggest anyone is in the wrong other than myself!
- rkapsoro 6y agoOh 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 https://github.com/orospakr/suppressor I don't imagine it still builds. Perhaps I should have followed through with it! Congrats to the author.
- kahmos 6y agoGreat stuff, but has wider functionality krisp.ai
- jldugger 6y ago"Forward to your annoying coworker today!"
- Diggsey 6y agoI work with someone who just installed this. The effect was that he accidentally muted himself every time he started typing. Not ideal... Filtering out key-presses from the audio stream without completely muting it would be much better.
- tdy721 6y agoI need this app. But that’s not what it does :)
- serpico7456 6y agoI wonder why the developer didn't notarize this app? Seems especially relevant since there could be keylogging concerns. You can bypass the warning message, but not a good first impression for users: "Unclack can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated." I really like the app concept!
- als0 6y agoIs this app trustworthy? It isn't even notarized.
- SNACKeR99 6y agoI wrote a Windows utility for muting input devices while you type. Alpha version, but might help someone: https://github.com/drittich/stealth-notes/releases https://github.com/drittich/stealth-notes/releases
- robotsquidward 6y agoFor anyone stumbling upon this thread now, Unclack now supports macOS Catalina! I pushed an update today that is available from the landing page. Check it out! Thanks again for your support of Unclack!