Why Was Video Conference Mute Deprecated?

[MohamedESalem]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Hi PowerToys team,

I recently noticed that the Video Conference Mute (VCM) feature has been deprecated, and I wanted to understand the reasoning behind this decision. This feature was incredibly useful, and I (along with many others) relied on it regularly.

Could you provide more details on why it was removed? Was it due to technical challenges, low usage, or other considerations? If there are any recommended alternatives, I’d appreciate any guidance you can offer.

I hope the team might reconsider bringing it back or at least provide more context on the decision. Looking forward to your response.

Scenario when this would be used?

I’m really frustrated by this decision. This feature was incredibly useful, and I relied on it regularly for my remote work.

For example, when I’m in a virtual meeting on Teams or Zoom, I often deal with unexpected background noise—whether it’s family members, pets, or just general home distractions. With VCM, I could instantly mute both my microphone and webcam across all applications with a single shortcut, instead of scrambling to find the mute button in each app. It saved me from awkward moments and made managing meetings much smoother.

Now that it’s gone, I have to manually mute in every app, which is frustrating and inefficient. Can you explain why it was removed? Was it a technical limitation, low usage, or something else? If there’s an alternative, I’d love to hear about it.

I really hope you reconsider bringing it back, as it was a game-changer for remote workers like me. Looking forward to your response.

Supporting information

No response

[Soham-bit10]

I think it was copyright, wasn't it ?

[MohamedESalem]

I think it was copyright, wasn't it ?

Do you have any source for this? I couldn’t find anything about copyright being the reason for its removal

[Soham-bit10]

I seen some similar video's got banned from last few weeks, but still l am not sure.

[MohamedESalem]

I seen some similar video's got banned from last few weeks, but still l am not sure.

I’ve downloaded an older version (v0.87.1) that still has the VCM feature for now, but I’m still hoping for some clarification from the PowerToys team on why it was removed

[marcusfey]

Same for me. I'll switch back to an older version then.

[anikolop]

Same for me. The most used feature of this collection of tools.

[jaimecbernardo]

Thank you for the feedback!

Previous discussion can be seen on #36339 and #21473

It has been in maintenance mode since v0.67, has low usage, and there are similar features already available in Windows.

[DorsalAxe]

Pretty ridiculous, since we were previously told it would be deprecated but not removed. The "similar features already available in Windows" statement is false, and not even remotely comparable. The global mute that was added to Windows 11 requires apps to specifically support it, and barely anything does, so it's mostly useless! There is no equivalent function for disabling cameras.

There's been so much opposition to this, and yet it's been pushed through anyway. Shameful.

[HamonTeacher]

Same here! The most useful feature in this program! I used it every day.
Rolled back to the previous version with no updates. Let's wait for the developers to change their mind. If not - I hope the community will be able to implement a similar program separately from PT. Very frustrating to be honest.

[jfpaccini]

I really do not understand the problem that would have been to simply keep this tool ? Maintenance mode, fine. So what ? who has a problem with that ? is there any unofficial-we-do-not-dare-to-say reason ?

Please bring us this feature back !! ;)

thanks

[klueman]

It has been in maintenance mode since v0.67, has low usage, and there are similar features already available in Windows.

Again, as stated in the other post, this is not an answer.

1. You put it in maintenance mode 2 years ago and haven't worked on it since. You can't say "it's been in maintenance mode" like something went wrong with it. This is just stating your following through on the thing you wanted to do 2 years ago. That's not an answer to the question.

2. Many PowerToys modules have low usage. You mean to tell me fewer people were using VCM than any other module you support?

3. The feature you're claiming is available in Windows are not an equivalent feature whatsoever, and it is only available in Windows 11 anyway.

[HamonTeacher]

"There's an alternative in Windows 11," they said....

[AvogatoWizardWhisker]

I'm certain that many features in PowerToys have low usage, and yet VCM is deprecated and now removed? So many false promises from your part, and I'm quite disappointed. Can you at least provide an explanation on why and how removing VCM is going to help developing PowerToys? And even though the feature already existed in Windows 11, the apps supporting are so minimal and it doesn't make much sense.

[SiphonDuck]

From the (very little) I can understand by looking at the files, it looks like VCM relied on an x86 build that they wanted to remove, so instead of bothering to update the module to x64, they just deprecated it.

I honestly don't like this decision at all and, as many others here, will just use an older version from now on, hoping that a solution will be found in the future.

[arphox]

I used to use this tool and sometimes it simply didn't work without any feedback (did not mute), which instantly destroyed my trust with this tool, so I turned it off and never thought of it again.

[crutkas]

I made the decision to pull it. Almost all the same reasons held for why we wanted to do it back with 0.67 still hold true. It is very difficult to test, debug in general, different webcam hardware caused issues, Arm64 quirks, had accessibility issues, it actually is x86 vs 64-bit, and extremely low usage from telemetry compared to other PowerToys utilities. The complexities of the virtual driver added to installing, upgrading, and uninstalling PowerToys also added to my decision.

I do know it does actively impact those who did that and usage is usage. As a user, you have choices and we respect that. Our team cares deeply about users and giving everyone extremely powerful utilities.

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

[S0ndz]

I made the decision to pull it. Almost all the same reasons held for why we wanted to do it back with 0.67 still hold true. It is very difficult to test, debug in general, different webcam hardware caused issues, Arm64 quirks, had accessibility issues, it actually is x86 vs 64-bit, and extremely low usage from telemetry compared to other PowerToys utilities. The complexities of the virtual driver added to installing, upgrading, and uninstalling PowerToys also added to my decision.

I do know it does actively impact those who did that and usage is usage. As a user, you have choices and we respect that. Our team cares deeply about users and giving everyone extremely powerful utilities.

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

What was the point of having a community feedback thread, hundreds of users urging you to at least keep the module in legacy mode for newer versions of powertoys, making it clear you're going to keep pushing updates with it in legacy mode and not removing when you're just going to make the executive decision to remove it without warning after two years of assurance it wasn't going to be removed?

This was a massive rug pull and a stab in the back to not just VCM users, but to the wider powertoys community. What guarantee do we have that you won't find a different module you're having issues working on and doing the exact same thing?

[grocal]

My "telemetry" says I used this functionality in 99.9% of PowerToys usage cases. That was actually the only thing that I wanted from PowerToys in the first place.

It is very difficult to test, debug in general, different webcam hardware caused issues, Arm64 quirks, had accessibility issues, it actually is x86 vs 64-bit,

Are those actual problems when this was in maintenance mode? Doubt that.

and extremely low usage from telemetry compared to other PowerToys utilities.

YMMV. I try to block any telemetry anyway but in this case - see my first sentence.

I do know it does actively impact those who did that and usage is usage.

No you don't.

As a user, you have choices and we respect that.

Even more you don't. You decided for your users.

Our team cares deeply about users and giving everyone extremely powerful utilities.

As said before. But I get it - it's your product, you call the shots.

I will stay with 0.87.1 forever I guess. I've downgraded and turned off checking and downloading new versions.

[App-rentice]

I think most of the users using PowerToys are power users.
And as a power user I block telemetry almost immediately.
Just make a poll asking who is actually using VCM before removing it.

[MeroMeroNoMi]

This was honestly the main reason I used PowerToys. Please return the feature or offer a true alternative that can mute all microphones within the system using a keybind.

[klueman]

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

This tool needs admin rights. Those that would need a video conference mute are most likely not working on computers where they have a say in what can and can't be installed. It was a hassle just to get PowerToys approved, but part of the pitch was that it was a singular package direct from Microsoft, not a dozen individual open source projects.

[Amazonick]

well this sux. It was really the only thing that I was using every single day from PowerToys. I think I will downgrade as well and keep it there.

[APP32Piotr]

I use only the microphone mute. I do not need the video mute. Isn't the part with microphone muting orders of magnitude easier to test? I suggest keeping the microphone muting feature and forget about video.

[alaychak-hc]

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

While I am also disappointed it was fully removed, this commit did indeed help me put it back and rebuild with the latest code changes (so I appreciate the commit post). It's definitely one of my most used features of PowerToys, but there is unfortunately nothing like it (that fully mutes / hides the video via shortcut).

[quyenlv-unicloud]

This could open up a scenario for hackers to attack. PowerToys has admin rights so it is very dangerous if someone forks, then brings VCM back and installs it with malware... users who want to use VCM should not update instead of installing PowerToys from unknown sources.

[Soham-bit10]

That is a great point

[alejandro-bello]

I think we don't benefit from any explanation more than petition Microsoft's PowerToys Team to bring back VCM. What's the proper way to voice that so they can hear this petition from so many customers?

[APP32Piotr]

I use only the microphone mute. I do not need the video mute. Isn't the part with microphone muting orders of magnitude easier to test? I suggest keeping the microphone muting feature and forget about video.

As a replacement I use the nirsoft's nircmd mutesysvolume 2 default_record which is executed by a resident autoit script that waits for the Win+Shift+A keyboard shortcut. AI knows how to write such script.

[kanetik]

extremely low usage from telemetry compared to other PowerToys utilities.

I'm genuinely curious on this - does telemetry count visits to the VCM tab within PowerToys, or does it count invocations of the keyboard shortcuts? Because of the former, then yes, I imagine it is not well trafficked. Once set up, it doesn't require revisiting probably ever. And I'm not sure if even required a single visit to use it (probably does though).

Really I just wonder what constitutes "usage."

[NosherKhan]

I'm extremely sad to see VCM be removed, it's been an essential tool for me when on calls and streams. I understand that it must have been difficult to thoroughly test and develop for, but in those cases you could

• leave it running in maintenance mode as it was before, or
• isolate the components that didn't work and remove those

This recent removal in 0.88.0 is a real shame, because I now have to look for an alternative since my need is still there. If there are people in the community willing to put in the work to either bring it back or revamp it, I suggest you take their help and merge their branches. Honestly, if I could learn how to do it, I'd do it myself and push back to upstream.

[nwazuo]

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

While I am also disappointed it was fully removed, this commit did indeed help me put it back and rebuild with the latest code changes (so I appreciate the commit post). It's definitely one of my most used features of PowerToys, but there is unfortunately nothing like it (that fully mutes / hides the video via shortcut).

Hey, could you make a short gist or something to walk some of us through this?
I'd really love to still keep the latest updates while having VCM like this 🙏

[awadrummer]

I'm extremely sad to see VCM be removed, it's been an essential tool for me when on calls and streams. I understand that it must have been difficult to thoroughly test and develop for, but in those cases you could

• leave it running in maintenance mode as it was before, or
• isolate the components that didn't work and remove those

This recent removal in 0.88.0 is a real shame, because I now have to look for an alternative since my need is still there. If there are people in the community willing to put in the work to either bring it back or revamp it, I suggest you take their help and merge their branches. Honestly, if I could learn how to do it, I'd do it myself and push back to upstream.

I have researched extensively and have found nothing paid or free that provides the functionality of muting the video and microphone via a keyboard shortcut. I really missed this feature since I used it all the time so I guess I'll never be able to upgrade powertoys until a viable alternative arises. Hopefully some coding wiz use the existing code to make a standalone project or keep an up to date powertoys version with the feature around. This was really sad to see it removed and ABSOLUTELY no alternative existing.

[cdurth]

As an open-source project, if someone does find it useful, 100% please fork / leverage our code. Here is the fork we used to remove it (12bb5c2). This will have the best snapshot of the latest bits of code for this utility and how we removed it out.

While I am also disappointed it was fully removed, this commit did indeed help me put it back and rebuild with the latest code changes (so I appreciate the commit post). It's definitely one of my most used features of PowerToys, but there is unfortunately nothing like it (that fully mutes / hides the video via shortcut).

Hey, could you make a short gist or something to walk some of us through this? I'd really love to still keep the latest updates while having VCM like this 🙏

@nwazuo
It looks like he forked, added back, and packaged a release you can use.
https://github.com/alaychak-hc/PowerToys/releases