Laugh Clipper

Never miss the funniest moment of the stream again.

Laugh Clipper listens for laughter, cheering and screams while you play, and saves a Medal clip for you, or asks first.

⬇  Download for Windows  ·  Website

How it works

Laugh Clipper runs quietly in your system tray and listens to your mic and whichever PC audio you pick, like game audio or voice chat. When it hears someone properly laughing, it pops up a small notification over your game. Click Clip (or press your Medal hotkey) and Medal saves the last few seconds. Or let it save the clip for you.

The popup never steals focus from your game, and it doesn't send anything to Medal until you (or auto-save) say so. Changed your mind? Say "don't clip" and it's cancelled. Not actually funny? Press 👎 and it gets a little stricter about that sound.

Features

😂 Catches more than laughs

Pick what counts as a moment worth clipping: laughter, cheering, shouting, screaming or gasps. The popup tells you what it heard and where it heard it: your mic, game audio or voice chat.

Each sound can have its own trigger level and its own sources. For example, listen for shouting only on your mic and voice chat, so explosions in the game don't set it off.

🎮 Only listens while you're playing

Turn on Only listen while playing and detection pauses whenever a game isn't the window in front, so a funny YouTube video between matches won't clip anything.

• Games you play from Steam, Epic, Xbox, Riot, EA, Ubisoft and GOG are added automatically.
• Anything running full-screen counts too.
• Add any other game from the list of open apps, or browse for its .exe.
• Quick alt-tabs don't pause it: it keeps listening for 5 seconds.

🎧 Hears your mic, game and voice chat separately

Listen to your microphone and any of your PC's audio outputs at once, each with its own live meter: grey shows how loud it is, and the bar on top shows how much it sounds like laughing (green once it would trigger). With Elgato Wave Link, every channel (Game, Voice Chat, Music…) shows up separately, so you can listen to the game and your friends but ignore your music.

🔖 Bookmarks your recordings

Recording a whole session in Medal? Turn on Add a bookmark instead of a clip and, while Medal is recording, a laugh drops a bookmark into the recording instead of saving a separate clip. It notices recordings however you start them.

Laugh Clipper also reads your clip and bookmark hotkeys straight from Medal's settings, so you don't have to type them in, and it warns you if they don't match.

🗣️ Say "don't clip"

Turn on Clipping → Cancel with your voice and, while a popup is up, just say "don't clip" (or "cancel clip") to call it off, even during an auto-save countdown. Speech recognition runs offline on your PC with Vosk, listens only for those few words, and only while a popup is showing.

👎 Learns what isn't funny

Each popup has a Not funny button. Press it and that clip is skipped, and the trigger level for that sound goes up a little, so the same kind of noise is less likely to set it off next time. You can always set it back on the Detection page.

✅ Knows when a clip really saved

After pressing Medal's hotkey, Laugh Clipper watches Medal's clips folder and only says Clip saved once the new clip is actually there. If Medal didn't make one (say the hotkey doesn't match), it tells you instead of pretending. And if Medal isn't running at all, it warns you before you need it, with an Open Medal button.

Every clip goes into the History page: what was heard, where, in which game, and whether it saved, with buttons to Play it or show it in its folder. Stats along the top show how many clips you've saved, this week's count, your most clipped game and your best laugh.

✨ And the rest

• Quick setup: a short guide on first launch sets your Medal hotkey and audio, and finds the right trigger level from a few seconds of laughing.
• Tune it to your voice: smooth live meters with a marker that holds your recent peak, so you can set the trigger level just below where your laughs land.
• Calibrate for your game (optional): it listens to your game for a minute, then to you laughing, and suggests a trigger level that catches your laughs but not the game's own sounds.
• Longer clips for longer laughs: with a few clip lengths set up in Medal (30, 60, 120 s…), it picks a longer one when the laughing goes on, so the start of a big moment isn't cut off.
• What's new: after each update, a short summary of what changed.
• Optional sound: a soft chime (or a pop, marimba or bell) when the popup appears, on any output you choose. Handy in exclusive-fullscreen games where the popup can't show.
• Pause hotkey: pick a key on the General page to pause and resume listening without opening anything.
• Tray icon shows what it's doing: grey when paused, an orange dot when it's waiting for a game or Medal is closed.
• Put the popup anywhere: any corner or edge of any monitor, and choose how long it stays up.
• Looks at home on Windows 11: follows your light or dark mode, with smooth, springy animations.
• Starts with Windows and lives in the system tray.
• Updates itself: when a new version is out, click Update and Restart.

Detection: what to listen for, and how sensitive it is	Clipping: your Medal hotkey and auto-save
Notification: which monitor, where, and for how long	General: games, pause hotkey, startup and updates
Audio: your mic and PC audio, with live meters	History: every clip, stats, and whether it saved

Install

1. Download LaughClipper-Setup-x.y.z.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it. It installs just for you, so it doesn't need admin rights.
3. Windows may show "Windows protected your PC" because the installer isn't code-signed yet. Click More info → Run anyway.
4. If it says "Smart App Control blocked an app that may be unsafe" instead, see the FAQ below.

You'll also need Medal installed and running, since it's what actually records the clips.

Getting started

The setup guide walks you through this on first launch (and any time from General → Run Setup Again):

1. Match the hotkey. It's filled in from Medal's settings when it can be read. Otherwise, on the Clipping page, click the key and press the same clip hotkey you use in Medal.
2. Pick what to listen to. On the Audio page, turn on your mic and the outputs your game and voice chat play through.
3. Tune it. On the Detection page, laugh a few times and watch the live score, then set the trigger level a little below where it peaks. Or click Calibrate… with your game running and let it work it out.
4. Try it: right-click the tray icon → Show Test Notification.

[!TIP] Medal saves the last N seconds when you press the hotkey. Set Medal's clip length longer than Laugh Clipper's "Wait after laughing stops", plus your longest laugh, so the start of the moment doesn't get cut off.

FAQ

Smart App Control is a stricter Windows 11 feature that blocks every app that isn't code-signed, with no "Run anyway" option. Running as administrator doesn't help. Laugh Clipper isn't signed yet, so the only way to run it on a PC with Smart App Control on is to turn it off:

Start → Windows Security → App & browser control → Smart App Control settings → Off

Heads up: on most PCs, Smart App Control can't be turned back on afterwards without resetting Windows. Most PCs already have it off (Windows only enables it on fresh installs, and often switches it off by itself), so you'll only see this on some machines.

Windows doesn't let anything appear over games running in exclusive fullscreen. Switch the game to borderless or windowed fullscreen. Auto-save still works either way.

It plays on Windows' default output, which with Elgato Wave Link is usually the System channel. If that's turned down in your mix, go to Notification → Sound → Play on and pick a channel you can hear, like Game.

If that game runs as administrator, Windows blocks hotkeys sent from normal apps. Run Laugh Clipper as administrator too (right-click it → Run as administrator). Also check the hotkey on the Clipping page matches Medal's exactly.

Run Detection → Calibrate… with your game going, or raise the Trigger level by hand, or make Length needed a bit longer. Turn off any music or browser outputs on the Audio page, and try Only listen while playing.

No. Audio is analysed on your PC, one second at a time, and then thrown away. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere. That includes "don't clip": the speech recogniser runs offline and only listens while a popup is showing. The only thing Laugh Clipper connects to is GitHub, to check for updates, and you can turn that off.

In %APPDATA%\Laugh Clipper: settings.json and laugh_clipper.log. If something goes wrong, the log is the first place to look.

How it hears laughs

Every quarter of a second, Laugh Clipper runs the last second of audio from each source through YAMNet, Google's sound classifier, which recognises 521 kinds of sound. It triggers when most of the last second or so sounds like laughing (or cheering, and so on), so one breath in the middle doesn't stop it. Quiet audio is skipped entirely, so it uses very little CPU.

For developers

You'll need Python 3.12 on Windows.

py -3.12 -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
.venv\Scripts\python tools\fetch_model.py
.venv\Scripts\python main.py

tools\fetch_model.py downloads the YAMNet sound model and the small Vosk speech model into models\.

build_local.bat builds dist\LaughClipper\LaughClipper.exe on your own PC (no installer, no auto-updates).

Tests run offscreen with fake audio, games and Medal, and on GitHub for every push:

.venv\Scripts\python -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
.venv\Scripts\python -m pytest

Releasing: write the notes in release-notes/vX.Y.Z.md, commit, then tag and push:

git tag vX.Y.Z
git push origin vX.Y.Z

GitHub Actions builds the app and the installer and publishes the release. Installed copies see it within a few hours, or straight away with Check for Updates.

README images are rendered from the real app: .venv\Scripts\python tools\make_readme_media.py (needs pillow, which requirements-dev.txt installs).

Path	What it is
laughclipper/engine.py	Audio capture and sound detection (YAMNet via MediaPipe)
laughclipper/app.py	Tray, hotkeys, popups, games and Medal checks, clipping, updates
laughclipper/toast.py	The animated popup
laughclipper/settings_window.py, widgets.py, theme.py	Settings window and hand-painted controls
laughclipper/updater.py	Checks GitHub Releases and installs updates
laughclipper/clips.py	Checks Medal saved each clip, and the clip history
laughclipper/setup_guide.py	The first-run setup guide
laughclipper/whatsnew.py	"What's new" window (bundled release notes)
laughclipper/calibrate.py	"Calibrate for your game": measures the game and your laughs, suggests a level
laughclipper/medal.py	Reads Medal's hotkeys and spots when it's recording
laughclipper/sounds.py	The optional notification sounds (made in code)
laughclipper/voice.py	"Don't clip": offline voice command with Vosk
laughclipper/winutil.py	Windows bits: startup, foreground app, process checks
LaughClipper.spec, installer/LaughClipper.iss	PyInstaller build and Inno Setup installer
.github/workflows/release.yml, tests.yml	Builds and publishes releases; runs the tests
site/, .github/workflows/pages.yml	The one-page website, published with GitHub Pages
tests/	pytest tests (settings, triggers, games, clipping, clip check, Medal, sounds, setup guide, voice)

Credits

Built with YAMNet and MediaPipe (Apache 2.0), Qt for Python (LGPL), Vosk (Apache 2.0), SoundCard and keyboard.

Laugh Clipper isn't made by or affiliated with Medal. It just presses Medal's clip hotkey for you.

Released under the MIT License.