How to enable the Thinkpad microphone mute key on Ubuntu 16.04
While the hardware mute button of my Lenovo x230 worked on Ubuntu 14.04 out of the box, it does not on Ubuntu 16.04. It is fairly simple to fix, though.
There is an extensive answer on Ask Ubuntu, but only part of it was required for me. Here is the gist of it.
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Open a terminal
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Run
acpi_listenand press the mute key. You should see something like this:Copybutton/f20 F20 00000080 00000000 KPress
Ctrl+Cto exit. -
Run
amixer scontrols. You will see multiple lines, one of which should be:CopySimple mixer control 'Capture',0If there is no
'Capture', you might see'Internal Mic'or similar. -
Now bind the key to toggle that device. Create an ACPI event file for that:
Copysudo vim /etc/acpi/events/lenovo-mutemicAdd the following. Fill in
eventwith theacpi_listenresult for your hardware mute key. If there was noCapturecontrol for you, change accordingly (keep the quotes).Copyevent=button/f20 F20 00000080 00000000 K action=/usr/bin/amixer sset 'Capture',0 toggle -
Restart the ACPI service.
Copysudo service acpid restart -
That should be all. Do some testing to see if it actually works.
On my x230, the hardware key has an integrated notification LED. If your Thinkpad does not have that, you could use your power LED and/or an extra notification bubble.
Please see the answer on askubuntu.com on how to add such features, or if you run into trouble.
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