How to disable track doesn't turn off webcam in WebRTC

In WebRTC, if you want to disable audio tracks (so that the remote party cannot hear the local audio) while keeping the webcam active, you can directly manipulate the enabled property of the audio track. This allows the video stream to continue without transmitting the audio stream. Follow these steps:

Get Audio Tracks: First, you need to retrieve the audio track from the media stream. Assume you already have a MediaStream object named stream that contains both audio and video.

Disable Audio Tracks: Disable audio transmission by setting the enabled property of the audio track to false. This does not affect the state of the audio track; it simply temporarily stops the audio stream from being transmitted.

javascript
const audioTracks = stream.getAudioTracks();
if (audioTracks.length > 0) {
    audioTracks[0].enabled = false;
}

Advantages of this method include simplicity and no impact on video transmission, making it ideal for scenarios requiring temporary muting, such as when a user wants to temporarily mute themselves during a video call.

Consider a video conferencing application where a user needs to temporarily mute their microphone to prevent ambient noise from disrupting the meeting, while still maintaining video transmission. In this case, developers can provide a button that, when clicked, executes the above code to achieve muting without affecting video display.

Important considerations:

• Ensure you check for the existence of audio tracks before modifying their state.
• Changes to the enabled property are reversible; you can restart audio transmission by setting enabled to true.

Through this approach, WebRTC provides flexible control, allowing developers to adjust media stream behavior according to actual needs without disconnecting or re-establishing the connection. This is highly beneficial for enhancing application user experience.