pttman 0.1.1

Push-to-talk microphone control with a daemon-backed command queue

pttman

Push-to-talk microphone control for PipeWire and WirePlumber.

pttman runs a small user service that serializes mute, unmute, and toggle requests over a Unix datagram socket so rapid key presses do not race each other.

Installation

Recommended: uv

uv tool install pttman

This installs pttman to ~/.local/bin/.

Then install and start the systemd service:

git clone https://github.com/mwolson/pttman.git
cd pttman
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp systemd/pttman.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now pttman.service

Alternative: install.sh

git clone https://github.com/mwolson/pttman.git
cd pttman
./install.sh
systemctl --user start pttman.service

This copies pttman to ~/.local/bin/ and installs and enables the user service.

After installing, point your push-to-talk key at the client binary.

xremap

On Arch Linux, install the xremap variant that matches your desktop environment (only one should be installed):

paru -S xremap-gnome-bin     # GNOME
paru -S xremap-hyprland-bin  # Hyprland
paru -S xremap-kde-bin       # KDE Plasma
paru -S xremap-niri-bin      # Niri
paru -S xremap-wlroots-bin   # wlroots-based compositors (sway, etc.)

Then configure a push-to-talk key binding:

modmap:
  - name: Push-to-talk
    remap:
      F5:
        skip_key_event: true
        press: { launch: ["/home/your-user/.local/bin/pttman", "--unmute"] }
        release: { launch: ["/home/your-user/.local/bin/pttman", "--mute"] }

Pressing F5 tells the daemon to unmute. Releasing F5 tells it to mute again.

You can check the current microphone state with:

pttman --status

Corsair mice on Arch Linux

If you use a Corsair mouse and want one of its extra buttons to behave like F5, ckb-next is a straightforward way to do it.

On Arch Linux, install ckb-next with:

sudo pacman -S ckb-next

Then launch ckb-next, select your mouse, pick the button you want to use for push-to-talk, and remap that button to F5.

After that, xremap can keep using the F5 rule above, and your Corsair mouse button will trigger push-to-talk through pttman.

If you specifically want the upstream development build instead of the packaged release, the ckb-next project wiki also lists ckb-next-git for Arch-based systems.

Commands

pttman --daemon
pttman --mute
pttman --unmute
pttman --toggle
pttman --status

Aliases:

• --release for --mute
• --press and --talk for --unmute

Service

systemctl --user start pttman.service
systemctl --user status pttman.service
journalctl --user -u pttman.service -f

The daemon listens on $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/pttman.sock. If the daemon is not running, client commands fall back to direct wpctl execution.

Development

Testing

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Hooks

lefthook install
lefthook run pre-commit --all-files

The pre-commit hook runs uvx ruff check, uvx ty check, and the unit test suite.

License

MIT