Give my macbook a VU meter and a mic power light

July 24, 2020 5:21 PM

Now that everything is Zoom, I want to make my laptop running macOS Catalina do these things:

1. Show someplace always-visible (ideally in the menubar) how much sound my microphone is picking up, as if it was a decibel meter.
2. Show someplace always-visible (ideally in the menubar) whether my microphone is muted.

Do tools exist that do this? Or how close can I get?

There is another thing that sounds a bit like #1, but that isn't what I want. I can find out how much my computer is amplifying microphone input — in macOS terms, how high I've set System Preferences > Sound > Input > Input Volume. But that's not what I want. I want a tool that will make visible how much sound my computer is detecting, before amplification — in macOS terms, I want to see the value of System Preferences > Sound > Input > Input Level flicker up and down.

I specifically don't want to keep my System Preferences window always visible whenever I'm on a meeting. I've tried that and it takes up too much screen real estate.

posted by nebulawindphone to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

My zoom client on my Mac shows levels over the mute/unmute button, but it’s not in the best spot.
posted by advicepig at 6:32 PM on July 24, 2020

Response by poster: Ah, right, sorry — I know I said "zoom," but part of the issue is that there are actually a lot of different programs I end up using. Different people I work with or hang out with use different video chat software. So I'd like this stuff in a consistent place that doesn't depend on a specific program.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:40 PM on July 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

For #1 how about Audio Hijack?
posted by filmgeek at 8:48 PM on July 24, 2020

Soundsource includes these capabilities and has a more compact UI than System Preferences. Same vendor as (and a lot of shared code with) Audio Hijack, but a bit more targeted toward this type of use case.
posted by doomsey at 10:39 PM on July 24, 2020

Response by poster: I looked at Soundsource — they let you display the output level in the menubar, but for some reason not the input level.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:20 AM on July 25, 2020

I was thinking you’d pin the main window somewhere on the screen. It does display the input level in the main window, and you can click to mute.
posted by doomsey at 6:00 AM on July 25, 2020

Not a menu bar solution, but Broadcast Using This Tool is free, has a microphone meter, and can be set to "always on top". If you drag it off to the side so only the status and VU meter are showing, it takes up a relatively small amount of screen.
posted by lucidium at 9:07 AM on July 25, 2020