Switching Audio & Video Settings in Zoom Video-Conferencing App

[NRKorsakov]

Hi!

I am using Zoom Video-Conferencing allot lately.

I need to switch back and forth allot between two sets of audio/video settings...one for playing-back video & audio, the other for on-camera speaking.

I have set up two KM pallete buttons to switch back and forth.

The video is easy...I can hit the pallete button and get to the Zoom video settings and switch back and forth between the two video sources by using both the mouse-coordinates of the video settings window and then typing the first few letters of the correct source in that drop-down menu to switch.

The problem I'm having is with the audio settings, as in the audio settings window things move around geographically in the window according to what is currently selected, so that mouse coordinates won't work, and typing the first few letters of a setting-choice doesn't work either.

I've attached two screenshots of the two audio settings I use, but I can't figure out how to switch between these with a KM macro?

Thanks!!!

[cdthomer]

Well there is a built-in keyboard shortcut to switch camera feed... so you could really just use that, or use Keyboard Maestro to send that shortcut keystroke to Zoom so you could still trigger it from the palette (see screenshot below).

Zoom Settings Screenshot (click to expand/collapse)

For the audio, that’s trickier as I don’t see any built-in keyboard shortcut for to switch audio. However, you could perhaps do a combo of right-click the microphone icon at the bottom left and click on the corresponding audio option from the pop-up menu that appears (see screenshot below).

Audio Popup Menu Screenshot (click to expand/collapse)

In the past, I would have talked about AppleScript to do this... but Zoom has god-awful accessibility features and zero built-in AppleScript compatibility, so everything I did in the past with AppleScript would typically break at every client update. So I don’t bother any more.

[NRKorsakov]

Hey thank you so much for the reply!

I had not seen the microphone right-click before, so that gets me half-way. and playing with that...hitting the right text twice gets you from input to output or vice-versa, so thanks very much for that.

That's a big help right there.

The other audio pref. is still a problem, but I'll play around with that some more.

Thanks for your help!

[cdthomer]

Ah ok, looking more closely I see you need to not only change the audio device, but the actual settings as well.

I would recommend using the Found Image action [Keyboard Maestro Wiki], as that can find those options and click them accordingly, regardless of where they appear on the screen.

Let me know if you need more help with that particular aspect and I’ll be glad to go into further detail.

-Chris

[Nige_S]

@NRKorsakov

I need to switch back and forth allot between two sets of audio/video settings...one for playing-back video & audio, the other for on-camera speaking.

Offering an alternative...

Zoom can use "Same as System" for both speaker and microphone. So you could, perhaps, switch devices via the Sound menu bar item and set input/output volume with AppleScript. There's been a bunch of threads here on the first and the second could be as simple as

set volume input volume 0 -- for "off", 100 for max

I don't have multiple in/outputs on this machine so I can't test much, but it should be feasible... That's assuming you don't want to have the Zoom audio on your device's speakers while you're really listening to Kylie on your headphones, of course

[NRKorsakov]

I thanks for both of these great sets of suggestions!

Nige, your suggestion has me exploring whether Zoom will save profiles and then I can switch between them.

And Chris, the Found Image Action is something I never even heard?

I am going to spend some time with that right now. It may be the answer for not just this, but allot of other DAW-related KM things that I can't get to work.

The DAW I use is getting more controllable in terms of remote control options, but there are still things in every DAW (and especially audio plugins) where trying to control with KM is really difficult.

I have come up with some really "Rube Goldberg" solutions, but they either are unreliable or break every time there is an upgrade, "bug fix", or whatever for DAWSs and plugins.

Thanks again so much for all of this terrific guidance!

[NRKorsakov]

Hi All!

Back after how many months?

Using Zoom again, and of course Zoom has changed it's menu's in the interim so I am attempting to rebuild my Macros for Zoom Settings.

I have it all pretty much working, again kind of a "Rube-Goldberg" approach, as I can't figure out how to make KM see if a setting-button is on or off because Zoom's menus don't seem to work that way, unlike my DAW app (Motu DP).

I have most of the the KM macro steps working by window-position, which is really finicky, but working somewhat OK.

It kind of relies on the initial settings being correct when I open Zoom, so that when I hit the macro it turns something on or off, but there is no way I can see for KM to know the on or off state of the preset-button, again unlike my DAW app.

Here are the Zoom Settings Preference for audio;

Here is one setting I need to either turn on or turn off that I still can't get working;

Since the zoom prefs. menu is not really (text-based?), I tried searching by image a few different ways (below are four images I created with screenshots);

But none of them actually work for me?

Again, I am able to do audio and camera switching (the pull-down menus let me type the first letter of the audio devices, camera, etc, and hit enter), but this one is confounding?

I actually looked to see if anyone has written an add-on Zoom utility for changing settings/preferences on the fly (not that I could find), and also if there is some sort of OSX coding or Terminal thing that allows for switching an apps preferences in an instant on the fly (not that I could find, and would not be smart enough to figure it out if there was such a thing!).

Or maybe I'm just going about this the wrong way?

Many thanks!!!