Feedback on MicCheck - Makes you aware when your microphone is active in the background

Link to MicCheck: https://gum.co/mic-check

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!

I plan to launch it on Product Hunt soon. I would love to hear your thoughts on the idea, execution, communication .. anything you find worthwhile to mention.

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.

Big beautiful red box

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?)