MicCheck makes you aware when your microphone is active in the background & saves you from an embarrassing situation! Now, you can talk trash behind people's back without worrying about a conference call you forgot to hang up on your Mac.
Hello PH,
I am an Aerospace Engineer turned self-taught developer & designer. While I am busy building a creative automation tool; this product is a direct result of several embarrassing situations I went through when I accidentally left my conference calls active and went on talking trash!
Why? A little story …
Due to COVID-19 situation, most of us are working from home - taking classes, attending meetings & webinars on various video conferencing apps.
It just so happened that I was browsing for some important information (no… seriously!) while a conference call was on. The meeting got over and I happily went about working on other things, discussing with my wife who is going to make dinner & who is going to do dishes (I know… right?).
Only an hour later, I realised that I never disconnected the call & my microphone was still listening. That whole day I kept wondering, who all may have heard & what all were the things I may have said (…behind their backs!). Nevertheless, now they all know what I feel about them. I may have lost a few friends (or made a deeper connection … Radical Candor … you see).
Well, this happened thrice in 2 weeks! (Yours is about to happen … just wait!)
So …
The weekend came up and my inner geek woke up to solve it. I don’t have many more friends to lose after all. Few nights in, and ‘Houston, we have a lot of other problems in life but not this one anymore!’
1…2…3 … mic check … MicCheck is in the house!
What does MicCheck do?
MicCheck is very high tech! It shows a big beautiful red box (or a small one if you prefer) on top of your screen whenever your microphone is in use; even when the conference call app is lost in one of your 100 browser tabs or buried deep down in your war-room control centre that you have made your desktop to be.
Wait, isn’t it already …
Now you are wondering, doesn’t macOS already have such a feature built-in? Well, I couldn’t find one. Give it a try though (… and tell me first before telling the whole world …ssshhh! We can split profits) and until Tim Apple puts it in the next OS update, I (we?) can make a few bucks. Also, no harm in waiting for Apple’s WWDC event which is just around the corner (Is it really happening though?)
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Would love to hear your thoughts & answer your queries.
@lesly Actually, I did try Oversight before developing this and there is a huge difference which matters. OverSight only shows a notification when the mic becomes active and then once again when it becomes inactive. There is no persistent indicator on the screen which highlights if the mic is active or not. MicCheck has an 'always on top' persistent indicator highlighting the mic activity all the time.
@singhamardeep So it's a paid app that only do persistent notification compared to Oversight that:
- is free
- identify process
- allow to either 'block' or 'allow' a process
- whitelist process
- detect secondary 'consumer' processes
I mean, I'm all for new and better app's don't get me wrong, but why not been doing what Oversight does first, then add something more to make it worth the price?
@lesly I developed MicCheck to solve my own problem which is to always be aware when my mic is active. If OverSight could do that for me I wouldn't have made MicCheck. A notification at the beginning of a call is hardly useful because I already know I am going into a call. I don't have any plans to load it with many more features. It has only one problem to solve.
@lesly This is not to say that OverSight is not useful. I am sure it helps a lot of people in many ways. But I believe people who are having the problem that I am having, may find MicCheck useful :)
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