Scott Hanselman

Microsoft Teams Buttons for Stream Deck to Mute, Share, Hang up, and Manage Cameras

January 07, 2021 Comment on this post [5] Posted in Tools
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The Stream Deck! (amazon link) is a lovely little device with bright LCD buttons that you can program to do basically anything. I decided to finally add a few hotkeys for Microsoft Teams.

I wanted pretty icons, so I used the same ones that Teams uses! The images in a Stream Deck are 144x144 so I used Ctrl-PLUS in Teams to scale the Teams interface up to a large size. The icons look great since Teams uses SVGs (scalable vector graphics).

Paint.NET making Teams buttons for Stream Deck

I saved each icon in its own PNG and put it in DropBox/OneDrive so I can sync it to all my machines.

NOTE: I put the ZIP file with my Teams Stream Deck icons here for you, if you want it.

Here's the icons in my folder.

Stream Deck Icons for Teams

Next just go into Stream Deck's editor and make a new Hotkey button for each.

Making a Stream Deck Teams Row

The Hotkeys are like Ctrl+Shift+B to leave and Ctrl+Shift+M for mute. Your Teams (or zoom) has to be the topmost app for the Hotkey buttons to work as Stream Deck is just "pressing the keys" for you when you press the Stream Deck button. There's no Universal Mute button in Windows...yet.

NOTE: There are some 3rd party utilities you can use to change your systems mic and speakers and make system wide changes with a Stream Deck. I've blogged about how.

It takes just a few minutes, but this little quality of life change makes daily Teams calls just a little nicer. I'd encourage you to take a moment and do the same if you have a Stream Deck! (amazon link)

A few minutes of work up front will make each day a little nicer and that time adds up!


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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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January 12, 2021 12:00
This is a great idea. Have you seen any good projects about replicating a stream deck on a raspberry pi and touch screen? It’s something I’ve been thinking of looking into.
January 12, 2021 12:13
I've noticed that Teams respect the hardware mute key press on sennheiser USB headset (whichever app is the topmost), i suspect it works with all the usb headset that has an hardaware mute. so maybe you can emulate such device and turn on and off mute like that without relying on keyboard shortcut. Much more reliable and fun to build :)
January 12, 2021 13:30
cool idea - is it also possible to make teams display gifs or videos inside the video stream when pressing a button? A occasional KEKW would brighten up every video conference :-)
January 12, 2021 13:49
Hi Colin Dunn - I was looking at the same options - there is this one that uses a touch screen - https://www.hackster.io/news/diy-stream-deck-checks-all-the-boxes-701a7ea78800

But I think I'm going to try this one which uses cheap oled screens over push buttons - https://github.com/FreeYourStream/freedeck-hardware
January 12, 2021 17:23
Thanks Richard, I’ll check those out.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.