Windows 11 includes a universal mic button on the taskbar, allowing you to mute or unmute quickly and without switching to your meeting app. Unfortunately, the keyboard shortcut for it is a bit unwieldy.
I don’t blame the shell team, it’s not their fault that all the good keyboard shortcuts have been claimed over the decades, but the Win+Alt+K is just not quick and easy to me. Thankfully, using PowerToys keyboard manager we can set the mute shortcut to anything we please — even a single button.
Pick a Key
Maybe you are like me and have a key or two on your keyboard that you can repurpose for this task. The F1 key, for example, could easily be repurposed from its day job of opening a bing search. Or the Print-Screen key, which has already taken a back-seat to Win-Shift-S. Other oft-unused keys like Pause, Insert, or even Caps Lock are prime for repurposing into an easy mute toggle.
I picked Scroll Lock myself because I never ever use it and because it’s easy to find by touch on my particular keyboard. I can quickly reach out and mute/unmute myself during calls and meetings without any delay, switching programs, or grabbing my mouse and aiming at the actual mute button on the screen.
Remap It
To remap the key for this use, pop open PowerToys Settings and head to the Keyboard Manager, click Remap a Key, and then:
- Click the plus + button to add a row to the list.
- Under Physical Key, click the type button and then press the key you want to repurpose (Scroll Lock in my case). Once it appears in the box, click OK.
- Under Mapped To, again click the type button and then press the key combo you want to actually be performed. In this case, that’s the Win-Alt-K “mute shortcut”. When the shortcut appears in the box, click OK, then OK again to close the Remap Keys window.
Your PowerToys settings should now confirm that the remapping is in place, as you can see here. When I press Scroll Lock, PowerToys intercepts the command and sends Win-Shift-K instead. Perfect!
In my earlier article I had remapped Scroll Lock to basically be a shift key to render it useless (I never intentionally activate Scroll Lock), but this is a much better use for it and now I wish I had thought of it earlier!
