How to speak on microphone only when key is pressed

Question

I use Skype and Brosic to make conference video calls with my friends. Often there is a noise from the background.

I use Centos and Ubuntu for workstation. Is there a way to configure Linux to activate the microphone only when I press a key for example Shift? I want people to hear me when I press Shift key.

Answer 1

Maybe this repo on bitbucket would suit your needs?

https://bitbucket.org/boralyl/skype-linux-push-to-talk

That one is only for Skype however. This one is for linux as a whole:

https://github.com/latestrevision/linux-push-to-talk

Answer 2

I don't have personal experience with it, but over on the Skype forums, someone asked this and was referred to a sort of "Push to Mute", or "Push to toggle Mute" feature. Kind of backwards I guess, but you can get a similar functionality out of it. Quoting the thread...

Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Hotkeys. Select the last item and assign a hotkey. Save.

I used a push to talk feature of Ventrillo regularly, and I must say, push to mute would probably not have been near as useful, but if you don't have the muscle memory of the opposite already burned in, this may suffice. Plus it's apparently built-in to Skype.