Making the DualSense mute button work on PC

There is a small button under the PS button on your DualSense, with a microphone icon. On a PlayStation 5 it mutes you instantly, with a light to confirm. Plug the same controller into a PC and it becomes decoration: pressing it does strictly nothing.

Why Windows ignores it

The button is not a standard control. Windows knows the sticks, the triggers and the face buttons because they follow a shared convention. The mute button is a Sony addition, reported in a place Windows has no reason to inspect.

So the press does reach the PC: Windows simply does not know what it is supposed to mean, and drops it.

What BatteryOnPC does with it

Once the feature is on, pressing the button mutes your PC microphone, and pressing it again unmutes it. A notification confirms the state each time ("Microphone muted" or "Microphone on"), so you never have to guess whether you are live.

It acts on the Windows microphone itself, not on one particular application. Discord, a game's voice chat, a call, a recording: all of them stop hearing you at the same moment, which is exactly the behaviour you want from a mute button.

Turning it on

1. 1

   Open the window

   Right-click a BatteryOnPC icon in the taskbar, then Open BatteryOnPC.

2. 2

   Go to the Microphone tab

   Tick The controller's mute button mutes the PC microphone. The feature stays off until you turn it on, so the button never does anything you did not ask for.

3. 3

   Choose the microphone

   Under Microphone to mute, pick Default microphone, Communications microphone (voice) or All active microphones.

Not sure which one? Default microphone suits most setups. If your voice apps use a headset while the rest of the PC uses another input, choose the communications microphone; when in doubt, All active microphones mutes everything. The article on the mute button explains the difference.

The microphone icon and automatic unmute

In the same tab, three options work even without a controller:

• Show a microphone icon in the notification area: green when the microphone is open, crossed out in red when it is muted. A left-click toggles it.
• Unmute the microphone when BatteryOnPC starts.
• Unmute the microphone when quitting BatteryOnPC and when Windows shuts down.

Why the last two exist: Windows keeps the microphone state from one startup to the next, so a microphone muted tonight is still muted tomorrow. Tick both and you never end up silent without knowing it. The one at startup also catches up after an abrupt shutdown, when the other had no chance to run.

Why this is worth having

Muting on PC usually means a keyboard shortcut set up per application, which fails the moment you switch app, or a click somewhere in an interface, which means leaving your game.

The controller button is already under your thumb while you play. It requires no shortcut to remember, works the same everywhere, and does not interrupt what you are doing.

If nothing happens

• Check that the option is ticked in the Microphone tab: it is off by default.
• Check the controller is detected: its icon should be in the taskbar. Without detection there is no button to read.
• Check Windows has a microphone selected as the default recording device. Muting nothing produces nothing.
• The DualShock 4 has no such button: this feature concerns the DualSense and the DualSense Edge.

One last case: if DS4Windows holds the controller in exclusive mode, no other program can read it, the button included. The guide on DS4Windows explains the fix.

The small light on the button is driven by the console on a PS5. On PC it does not reliably follow the microphone state: trust the notification, or the microphone icon.