Use a button or a keyboard key

A Bluetooth push-to-talk button on your phone, or a key on your computer’s keyboard, can talk on a key or mute your microphone without you looking at the screen. Every press makes a short sound, so you hear that it worked.

Buttons are set up on each device. A button paired on your phone is not paired on your tablet, and what each button does is kept per server and per user. If you log in as someone else, you choose again.

Open Buttons

Open Settings, then Buttons. The list shows every button with what it does and whether it is connected. A card lights up while you hold its button, so this screen is also where you test one.

Add a Bluetooth button

On an iPhone, iPad or Android phone, tap Add Bluetooth button, switch the button on and keep it close. The first time, the phone asks whether livematrix may use Bluetooth. Allow it.

• A button livematrix knows, such as the Pryme PTT-Z, appears at the top with its name. Disconnect it from other apps first, and don’t pair it in the phone’s Bluetooth settings. Tap it, then press it once to confirm.
• Any other button appears as Other device — set up by learning. Tap it and follow the screen with your hand on the button: press and hold, release, and press once more. On a device with several buttons, choose Learn another button on this device for each of them.
• Phones, earbuds, watches and trackers are hidden. If your button is missing, turn on Show all devices.
• A button marked Acts as a keyboard sends key presses. Add it as a keyboard key instead.

The button reconnects by itself when you switch it on, come back into range, or turn Bluetooth back on. It also works with the screen locked and livematrix in the background.

Add a keyboard key

Tap Add keyboard key and press the key. On a computer, the key then works in every app, and other apps no longer receive it, so pick a key nothing else uses. livematrix warns you about keys like Space or Enter.

• On Linux with Wayland, your desktop asks you to confirm the shortcut, and may let you pick the actual key there. Change it later in your desktop’s shortcut settings. Desktops without global shortcuts get keys that work while livematrix has focus only, and the Buttons screen says so.
• On a phone or tablet, keys (for example from a Bluetooth button that acts as a keyboard) work only while livematrix is open on the screen.

Choose what a button does

Tap a button to choose its action:

• Talk on a key: while you hold the button, you talk on that key, as if you held the key on screen. A key that can only listen, such as a feed, is held open for listening instead.
• Mute: hold to unmute: you are live while you hold the button, and muted again when you let go. If you unmute on purpose with the mic button while holding, you stay unmuted.
• Mute: toggle mute: each press mutes or unmutes, like the mic button.
• Nothing.

Holding a button and a key on screen at the same time is fine. Letting go of one does not cut the other. If livematrix stops hearing from the button while you hold it, the press ends by itself within about half a minute.

Turn sound feedback off

Each button makes a short sound when you press and release it, when a toggle mutes or unmutes you (two different sounds). It plays a low double tone when a press can’t do anything: the key is gone, you aren’t connected, or no device can take the microphone. A button whose battery runs low sounds once. Turn Sound feedback off in the button’s settings to silence all of these for that button.

Forget a button

Open the button and tap Forget. For a Bluetooth device, every button of that device is forgotten. A learned button whose presses are not recognised reliably can be learned again with Learn again.