You are watching something on your laptop during working hours and suddenly you get a call from your manager. Definitely clicking on the speaker button and muting your system volume is not a fun thing to do as you are nervous and it has to be done super quickly. But what if you can double click on an icon to mute or unmute the system volume? Or even better, press some keys on your keyboard? Well, it is very much possible with a simple utility called NirCmd. Read on, to learn how!
How to Create a Shortcut to Quickly Mute/Unmute System Volume
Step 1: First of all, let’s download the NirCmd utility from its official website. Click here to get to the download site directly.
You can scroll down and click on the Download NirCmd link based on whether your system is 64 bit or 32 bit.
Step 2: Once the setup file is downloaded, extract it. You can do so by right clicking on the downloaded zip file and then by clicking on the Extract All option.
Step 3: Now double click to enter inside the extracted folder.
- Right click on the file named nircmd. File Type would be Application.
- Then click on the Copy as path option.
Step 4: Now, go to Desktop and right click on an empty space.
Click on New and then click on Shortcut.
Step 5: Now click on the text box that says Type the location of the item. Press CTRL + V to paste the path that you copied in Step 3. Press the space bar once and type mutesysvolume. Again press the space bar and type 2. Hit Enter key once done.
E.g., “<your_path>\nircmd.exe” mutesysvolume 2
Note: mutesysvolume and 2 are arguments being passed to nircmd utility. Specifying 2 is to toggle between mute and unmute options. If you want your shortcut key to perform only mute operation, then instead of 2 you can give 1 after mutesysvolume.
Step 6: Give your shortcut a name in this step. I have named it Mute.
Step 7: That’s it. Your brand new shortcut is created on your Desktop. Double click on it to mute your system.
Step 8: If you want to unmute, simply double click again.
How to Create a Keyboard Hotkey to Quickly Mute/Unmute System Volume
Hotkeys are very useful if you want to open menus or programs using only the keyboard.
First of all, create a shortcut by following steps 1 to 6 in the section above. After that, do the following to create a keyboard hotkey for your new shortcut.
Step 1: Right click on your shortcut icon, then click on Properties.
Step 2: As next, make sure you are on the Shortcut tab. Then click on the Text field associated with Shortcut key option to select it.
Finally, press the key combo that you want to use for your shortcut. For E.g., CTRL + ALT + N in the screenshot below.
Once done, hit Apply and Ok buttons.
You can now press the hotkey combo to mute or unmute your system volume instead of double-clicking.