How mute microphone by python

Question

I need to mute/unmute microphone on Windows 8 by python2.7. I find pyaudio and pymedia for interaction with sound devices, but can't find particular methods/realisations.

Answer 1

This can easily be achieved by using PyWin32:

import win32api
import win32gui

WM_APPCOMMAND = 0x319
APPCOMMAND_MICROPHONE_VOLUME_MUTE = 0x180000

hwnd_active = win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
win32api.SendMessage(hwnd_active, WM_APPCOMMAND, None, APPCOMMAND_MICROPHONE_VOLUME_MUTE)

Unlike the name APPCOMMAND_MICROPHONE_VOLUME_MUTE would suggest, this actually toggles the mic

mute → unmute | unmute → mute

Here is a list of other useful parameters that can be used with WM_APPCOMMAND: WM_APPCOMMAND message (Winuser.h) - Win32 apps | Microsoft Docs

Answer 2

A cursory look at the pymedia documentation confirms that finding this method is hard. Pymedia does not seem to be well documented. My suggestion, without knowing anything about the library, is to look at

Mixer(<Microphone Device ID>).getControls()

This supposedly returns a dictionary with the possible controls available to the device. However, you then need to figure out which one of those you want. Documentation implies a "Volume" and "Line In" entry should exist, both of which sound plausibly useful.

Then I suppose you have to poke around the 'controls' object within that dictionary and see what is available to you, possibly using reflection because the documentation is so lacking.

The final code might look something like this:

Mixer(<Microphone Device ID>).getControls()["Line In"].control.off()

(off() is not a actual method but something like it might exist)

Hope this helps.

EDIT: IMO this isn't a duplicate of How to toggle microphone on and off using python. That question does not actually answer anything, and instead just lists the libraries mentioned in the question. I feel like this question deserves some real code from someone more knowledgeable of the library in question.

Answer 3

import keyboard
import subprocess
p = subprocess.Popen(['C:\Windows\System32\mblctr.exe'])
keyboard.press_and_release('m')
p.kill()

You could use this method.