A Stream Deck Mini is the perfect little Zoom controller

One of my missions during the extended work-from- home transition of the past few years has been to find little ways to make the experience better and less annoying. Like many others, I have found a comfortable chair, set up a dedicated standing desk that is only used for work, and explored leveling up my video call quality by using a mirrorless camera as a webcam.

One of the most annoying things about using zoom is fumbling around for the call buttons. I have not been able to memorize the keyboard keys for two years, and since I am on the phone, my hands are usually off my keyboard. I'm the last one to leave the call because I can't seem to hit that button in a reasonable amount of time. I don't have the skills to create pull-chain systems to hang up the call.

If you do the smallest amount of shopping around, you can get the Elgato Stream Deck Mini for $80. The Stream Deck line of products have keyboards with little screens for buttons that you can program to do a lot of activities. Elgato sells them mainly to streamers on twitch and now has a range of small, medium, and large models.

The Elgato Stream Deck Mini is a keyboard with buttons. It can be used to control a wide variety of things, including smart lights, computer automations, and microphone and video controls when on video calls or live streaming.

• $73 at Amazon
• $80 at Walmart

The six-button Mini is perfect for my needs since I am not a streamer. Thanks to a host of official and community-created plugins, I now have dedicated controls for mute, video, and leave call always in front of me, no awkward keyboard shortcuts to remember or fumbling around with my mouse trying to find the on-screen buttons. I have a button that will bring the zoom window to the foreground when I click away from it, so I can quickly jump back to the call when my boss asks me a question. Don't read this.

The first four buttons are used for the Stream Deck's zoom controls. On a second page, I added folders for some smart lights in my office, system media controls, and the space heating in my office, all of which are supported by the Stream Deck. On a third page, I have dedicated buttons to launch specific Lightroom catalogs, so I don't have to go hunting for them on my external drive, and a folder for Google Meet controls I occasionally need to use. I have custom icons on a lot of the buttons so I can easily recognize what they are for.

The Stream Deck can be programming through its desktop app, which is very simple, drag and drop. In less than ten minutes, I was up and running with my preferred controls.

The Stream Deck Mini is small, but if you don't need a single button access to more than six things, you can use endless pages to control everything. If you're using macOS 12.3 Monterey, you can run Shortcuts right from the Stream Deck. I'm sure there are similar automation options for Windows that I don't bother to explore.

Related

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It doesn't make video calls any better, but it does remove one annoyance that I experienced multiple times per day. The Mini is cheap and easy to set up, and it has the same look and feel as a macro pad, but it doesn't break the bank.

Dan Seifert is a photographer.