[BUG] macOS 26.3 - 'Mute While Recording' doesn't work when using USB Audio Interface. Can handy have 'Pause While Recording' as an alternative?

[apotenza92]

'Mute While Recording' doesn't work when using USB Audio Interface.

I believe this is due to how macOS doesn't natively support a bunch of USB Audio Interfaces in terms of the ability to change their volume level using keyboard or software, volume changes must be done with them using the hardware knob.

I'm not sure how handy tries to achieve Mute While Recording but the output is not actually muted when I use any USB Audio Interface with my Mac.

Alternative suggestion

An alternative solution to this entire issue is a different suggestion - handy could have an option to automatically pause any media playback while recording instead of just muting. This way any playback of any app on any OS just pauses instead of relying on trying to mute playback from different combinations of hardware and software. I know https://superwhisper.com/ does this and it's very handy. Playback also auto-resumes after recording too.

System Information

App Version:
0.7.10

Operating System:
macOS 26.3

CPU:
M1 Pro

GPU:
M1 Pro

Logs

Log says [DEBUG] Mute applied but it never actually muted.
handy.log

[AlexanderYastrebov]

I'm not sure how handy tries to achieve Mute While Recording

Via AppleScript

Handy/src-tauri/src/managers/audio.rs

Lines 88 to 96 in 82297fa

	#[cfg(target_os = "macos")]
	{
	use std::process::Command;
	let script = format!(
	"set volume output muted {}",
	if mute { "true" } else { "false" }
	);
	let _ = Command::new("osascript").args(["-e", &script]).output();
	}

[apotenza92]

Refer #1028

[cjpais]

Let's not close issues until they are resolved, or are not going to be resolved. The PR has not been accepted yet.

[apotenza92]

Apologies.

[VirenMohindra]

looked into the logs you shared briefly. you're using a scarlett 2i2 USB, which (like most focusrite interfaces) doesn't expose kAudioDevicePropertyMute in its CoreAudio driver. macOS literally has no software path to mute it and i believe that's a driver / hardware limitation, and prob not a handy bug. the log showing [DEBUG] Mute applied is misleading since the AppleScript command succeeds silently even when it has no effect on the active output device

a small improvement on handy's side could be to replace the AppleScript with direct CoreAudio API calls and check AudioObjectHasProperty before attempting to mute. if the device doesn't support it, maybe surface a warning in the UI instead of silently failing. this is ~20 lines vs the current approach of fire and forget

re: your superwhisper suggestion — the pause-while-recording approach in PR #1028 would solve this for you regardless of output device, since it pauses media playback at the app level rather than trying to mute hardware. that said, the PR is quite large and difficult to test. might be worth scoping it down if the core ask is just macOS media key pause / resume

[apotenza92]

looked into the logs you shared briefly. you're using a scarlett 2i2 USB, which (like most focusrite interfaces) doesn't expose kAudioDevicePropertyMute in its CoreAudio driver. macOS literally has no software path to mute it and i believe that's a driver / hardware limitation, and prob not a handy bug. the log showing [DEBUG] Mute applied is misleading since the AppleScript command succeeds silently even when it has no effect on the active output device

a small improvement on handy's side could be to replace the AppleScript with direct CoreAudio API calls and check AudioObjectHasProperty before attempting to mute. if the device doesn't support it, maybe surface a warning in the UI instead of silently failing. this is ~20 lines vs the current approach of fire and forget

re: your superwhisper suggestion — the pause-while-recording approach in PR #1028 would solve this for you regardless of output device, since it pauses media playback at the app level rather than trying to mute hardware. that said, the PR is quite large and difficult to test. might be worth scoping it down if the core ask is just macOS media key pause / resume

No worries I'll wait for the PR to be reviewed I'm not in a rush. I'm running the PR version full time on my machine anyway 😄

[AlexanderYastrebov]

There is an alternative #1028 to pause playback.

[3manu31]

I also noticed an issue with when having my airpods connected to my mac and listening to media. My media pauses when i use handy for transcription, and doesnt start again, that only occurs when I have my airpods connected, and that's regardless whether I have the "mute while recording" on or off.