Native Input Mute

Native Input Mute stops chosen keyboard and mouse inputs from doing their normal job in Windows, while OmniControl carries on using them. A key that drives your virtual stick no longer also types, and a click mapped to a trigger no longer also clicks. It is global, it is one hotkey, and every way out of it is built in.

Overview

Pick the inputs you want muted from a full keyboard view, plus mouse buttons, the scroll wheel and pointer movement. While the feature is on, those inputs stop performing their normal Windows actions everywhere: no typing, no shortcuts, no clicks. OmniControl still sees them, so anything you have mapped through Keyboard and Mouse or Remapping keeps working exactly as before.

There is no game detection anywhere in it. It does not look at which application is in the foreground, does not match executable names, and has no allow-list or block-list. It is on or it is off, and what it mutes is only ever what you selected.

Why use it

The problem it exists to solve is double input. When W is driving a virtual left stick, W is usually still typing a W into whatever else is listening. Alt-tab out of a game and you find a browser search box full of "wwwww". Bind left-click to a trigger and you are also clicking whatever is behind the game. Muting the input at the Windows level removes the second half without removing the first.

It is also a straightforward way to disable keys you never want to fire. The Windows key during a match, Caps Lock, a key that has started chattering on an ageing keyboard: choose it once and it stops doing anything until you turn the feature off.

Use cases

• Driving a virtual controller with WASD without those keys also reaching the desktop, the chat box, or the browser behind the game.
• Mapping mouse buttons to triggers or face buttons without the clicks landing anywhere else.
• Disabling the Windows key, Caps Lock or Alt+Tab for the length of a session.
• Silencing a physically faulty key that keeps repeating.

Getting out

The escape routes are the part worth reading before you turn it on, because the feature is global by design.

• Ctrl + Alt + Home, or hold both Shift keys for two seconds. Both are recognised inside the input layer itself, so they work even if the app has stopped responding, and even if you have muted those keys.
• Release input in the OmniControl tray icon, if you would rather use the mouse. The tray icon is forced visible for as long as anything is muted.
• Muting lifts on its own if OmniControl closes, crashes, is killed from Task Manager, or stops responding. It is a permission that has to be continuously re-earned, not a state that has to be cleaned up.
• It is always off when OmniControl starts. Your selection is remembered; the switch is not.

The first time you ever turn it on, OmniControl asks you to actually perform the emergency release once, so you find out that it works on your keyboard before you are relying on it.

Limitations

Muting mouse movement freezes the pointer, but it cannot stop an application being told the mouse moved. Windows lets any program read the mouse directly, and no program can deny that to another. Ordinary software follows the pointer and so sees nothing; a game reading the mouse directly can still detect the motion. The Native Input Mute page has a built-in test that reports how it behaves on your PC as Full, Pointer only or Not tested, and Play Mode covers the case it cannot.

Going further than that would mean a kernel driver or reaching into another game's process, which is exactly the behaviour anti-cheat exists to catch, and the risk of that lands on your account rather than ours. OmniControl stays inside ordinary Windows behaviour and does not hide from anything.

Keys and mouse buttons behave the same way for programs that read input directly. An application in the background is never sent the input at all, which is why Play Mode is effective; an application in the foreground reading input directly may still receive it.

Works with the rest of OmniControl

Native Input Mute is free for everyone, on both the free and Pro tiers. It pairs most naturally with Keyboard and Mouse, where the same inputs are already driving a virtual pad through Emulation. An optional setting links the two, so the mute hotkey becomes a single switch: outside it your mouse is an ordinary mouse, and inside it your keyboard and mouse are driving the pad. For the full walkthrough, read the Native Input Mute documentation.