What is it?
Skippy (aka Button Boy) has gotten out of control, so this is a free autohotkey script that automatically mutes your PC when the Big Brother live feeds go to a break (“We’ll Be Right Back” aka WBRB), then un-mutes when the feeds return. If you find this useful or have issues, Contact me or send me a message on reddit.
How to install
- Download and Install autohotkey (Windows only). You can close “Dash” if it opens.
- Download the script zipfile: BB Auto-Mute v1.00
- Extract the contents anywhere, then double-click on bb-automute.ahk. It will run in the systemtray.
That’s it! However, there are some options you can set, and some limitations, so read below. For best results, keep the video window centered or go fullscreen.
How does it work?
In short, it keeps scanning an area of your screen, searching for a specific color. If it finds that color it mutes your whole PC. When that color goes away, it un-mutes. By default it’s set to detect the WBRB text color. Due to video compression, the color will not be exact on every pixel, which is why using the text color is good (because there is a lot of the same color, and it’s not a color that really appears in the house). If using another color, you may need to increase the “ColorOffBy” option.
If the set color happens to appear on someone’s clothing or anything else, it could trigger. Luckily, I haven’t experienced false positives during the regular feeds so far. If you do, you can pause the script until that color goes away (right-click on the icon -> Pause Script).
You can find the color yourself by using Window Spy which comes with AHK. This is better than using an image program, because you’ll get the exact color that AHK sees. Open Window Spy (you can find it in the AutoHotkey Dash) and hover your mouse over the color you want to copy on the WBRB screen. The hex code will show up in Window Spy. Alt-tab to it and it should freeze the code so you can copy it.
Night Light and Picture-in-picture limitations
If you use a program like F.lux or Night Light (makes your screen more orange at night), you may need to have Hardware Acceleration ENABLED in your browser settings. If not, this script will see a color-modified version of the video, and not detect it correctly. You can also disable F.lux/Night Light instead, or modify the ColorToFind in the script to use the new color (but it might keep changing throughout the day/night).
If you use picture-in-picture (i.e., you “pop out” the video), this script may not work due to the way videos are rendered (the script only sees a black box). You may be able to avoid this by turning OFF hardware acceleration, but see the Night Light note above — you’ll also need to disable anything that changes the screen color. You’ll also probably need to change the Area option, unless you keep the pop-out near the center of your screen.
Does not detect kittens (the Adopt-an-animal screen), but that typically lasts a long time while they’re filming nominations or a competition.
Script Options and how to edit
An AHK script is a simple text file, so you can open it in ANY text editor (like Notepad) to see all the code and modify it. If you modify it, save, then reload the script (right-click on the icon and “reload this script”). There’s a section near the top with options you can change:
SetTimer: Change the number to set how often it scans. 100ms is pretty good. If you don’t want to hear ANY music, you can set it even lower, but it will use more CPU.
Unmute: Because the script is constantly looking for the color, if it mutes WBRB, and you switch tabs, bring up other windows, etc., it will unmute (it no longer sees the WBRB color). You can pause the script in this case (right-click on the icon), or you can set “Unmute := false” in the script.
ColorToFind: The color it should detect on the WBRB screen, in RGB hex code, like 0xCFA000. You can find this color yourself using Window Spy.
ColorOffBy: Increase the number to find more color variations, but may cause false positives because it will trigger on more colors.
Area: By default, it scans an Area that is basically a vertical slice down the center of your screen, to avoid wasting time checking the entire screen. You can change this Area in the script if you keep the video in the bottom-right corner, for instance.
Feel free to modify other parts of the script if you know what you’re doing. You can set your own Area coordinates, change the “pause” hotkey, etc. If you don’t like the tray notifications popping up every time the script triggers, you can disable those lines by putting a semi-color at the beginning:
; TrayTip, BB Auto-Mute, We'll Be Right Back!, 2, 1