Add an option to keep the banner open when a mic is unmuted

[buybackoff]

What workfow do you want to improve?

In PowerToys, there is an option to hide the banner only when a microphone is muted. I use it daily and find it quite important so that I do not forget to mute mics after a meeting.

But now I and probably many others will have to uninstall PowerToys because of their disrespectful stubbornness to remove the conference mute feature completely since v0.88. That was the only feature I used from PT multiple times per day. SoundSwitch hotkey works exactly like in PowerToys - just muting mics as if via system settings. That's very nice and I would like to switch to SoundSwitch.

How to make it better?

To make this feature complete:

• Permanent banner option as described above
• Option for a compact banner: just compare with PowerToys on the picture. Even the small one sometimes hides some panels/buttons/status_bar e.g. in Rider during remote pairing or code review
  
• PowerToys detects mic status: if I use SoundSwitch's hotkey or the system settings then the banner from PowerToys appears when unmuted. It's probably some regular polling of the system status. It's an important detail in case a mic is unmuted by some other app.

Any alternative?

Continue using PowerToys v0.86.

Additional context

For reverse visibility in PT's issues just linking them here:

• Why Was Video Conference Mute Deprecated? microsoft/PowerToys#37126
• Add back video conference mute microsoft/PowerToys#37224
• Deprecate Video Conference Mute in v0.88 microsoft/PowerToys#36339 (mentions SoundSwitch)

As a .NET dev I may consider implementing this myself (if PRs are easily accepted), but I cannot at all estimate the complexity or ETA; and for someone fluent with the codebase that may be much easier.

[chriscollinsboxuk]

As a user coming who has also left PowerToys for this, I'd love this too.

Alternatively, if the microphone's muted status could be made visible by adjusting the icon in the systray, that would also serve the same purpose for me - either would work, but I think personally this might be less obtrusive than always displaying the banner.

[buybackoff]

if the microphone's muted status could be made visible by adjusting the icon in the systray

Windows has an icon in the tray when a microphone is in use, but that icon is very small and not obtrusive enough. The main point of the sticky banner is its obtrusiveness, so that it is hard to forget to turn off the mic. The size of PowerToys banner is well balanced for that.