Controlling Google Meet – Part 2: System-wide keyboard shortcuts

Vinay Thakker
  • 7 min read

Overview of this series:

Home Stretch!  Installing the extension.

In Part 1, we wrote all of the configuration and code for our Meet Controls extension. Now it’s time to install it into Chrome so that we can test it.

  1. In navigate to chrome://extensions/
  2. Turn on Developer Mode. This checkbox is a simple gate for you to acknowledge that you are loading code that is not signed, and may be unsafe. These are known as unpacked extensions. This step is not necessary when we pack and post post our code to the Chrome Web Store, and install from there (which we will cover in Part 3 of this series!).
  3. Load unpacked extension by locating the directory where your extension files are saved

Configure shortcuts

You’ll note that in the manifest, we configured a suggested keyboard shortcut for each command. As of this writing, Chrome 59 does not auto-enable the suggested shortcuts.

  1. “commands”: {
  2. “toggle”: {
  3. “description”: “Toggle mute”,
  4. “global”: true,
  5. “suggested_key”: {
  6. “default”: “Ctrl+Shift+T”,
  7. “mac”: “MacCtrl+Shift+T”
  8. }
  9. },

As such, in order to test the extension locally, we will need to map the keyboard shortcuts manually. This is very easy to do in Chrome.

  1. Navigate to chrome://extensions/
  2. At the very bottom, click “Keyboard shortcuts”.
  3. Configure a key combo that suits your preferences, as well as if you would like the shortcut to function globally/system-wide. If you choose to scope the shortcut to Chrome only, the shortcut will only work when a Chrome window (associated with this specific Chrome profile, if you have more than one) is in focus.

Time to try it out!

Open a Google Meet session, and try out your keyboard shortcut to toggle the mute. If you selected the “Global” shortcut option above, should work whether you are browsing Chrome, or using other applications on your desktop. On keypress, you should see a notification pop up indicating the audio status.

Stay tuned…

In Part 3, we’ll show you how to post this extension (privately) to the Chrome Web Store so that you can administratively deploy this to members of your G Suite domain.