Mute your Speakers with the Caps Lock Key

09 dec 2008

If you’re stuck with a keyboard without multimedia keys, it can be incredibly difficult to quickly mute your speakers. Here is a simple AutoHotKey script that maps the “Caps Lock” key as a quick mute keyboard shortcut.

First install AutoHotKey if you haven’t done so already. Then type this command in a file mute.ahk, and double click to execute.

CapsLock:: SoundSet, +1, , mute

Pressing the “Caps Lock” key mutes the speakers, pressing it again restores sound. Here is an executable if you don’t have AutoHotKey installed.

http://digital-dexterity.com/ Siddharth Agarwal

Nowadays, there are not many companies shipping keyboard without multimedia keys. But, anyways, it is a good hack. How can it be extended to other functions?
Steve Edwards

Excellent. Unfortunately, those of us who work in an office with MSWord documents all day long still need the Caps Lock, but most of us don’t have a multimedia keyboard. What I personally could really use is an executable that would mute using the menu key or the right-hand Alt, Ctrl, Windows, or Menu keys. Any volunteers?
Dwight K Shrute

@ Steve – I use Global Audio Control (http://www.snapfiles.com/get/globalaudio.html). Its discontinued and old still works great.
Gurpreet

Amit – Awesome program! This is really handy. Any chance of incorporating a disable Insert key?
http://www.forgottenprojects.com ferdy182

If you replace ‘CapsLock” with ScrollLock’, you have the same effect but with a key less used.
area41

@Steve
AHK is a very powerful program.
In the above example if you replace CapsLock with ^CapsLock then ctrl-caps lock will mute and won’t effect the ordinary operation of capslock.

@Gurpreet
Not sure but adding this to your AHK script may work:
InsertKey::

Creating new windows key based hot keys is one of my favorite things to do with AHK.
josh

This line of script did not work for me, I’m running Vista 64-bit (not sure if that is the difference), but the following did:

CapsLock::Send {Volume_Mute}

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Mute your Speakers with the Caps Lock Key

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