I don't want to see useless hamburger menu in the corner of the screen that I will never use. I will never use it, it's like decoration that I don't want. I need my mic icon visible somehow because I am now constantly missing talking to my friends because I am muted. It's happened multiple times now, and I don't want to clutter my screen with useless icons. I need to use push to talk because my house is noisy and sometimes I hot-mic. I can't mentally keep track of whether I'm muted just by the noise of mute/un-mute.

To keep my mic indicator visible, which is a tool I actively use during every conversation I have on VRChat, I have to enable other HUD elements which I will never use. I have never had to deal with this since I started playing VRChat, 5 years ago. There has been in the past feedback from users regarding the mic icon that resulted in real improvements to its function as a tool. The current functionality of the mic icon seems like a regression on those improvements.

Edit: I want to be a bit more thorough about how I rely on the mic icon. When I'm muted, it flashes red for a moment. Otherwise, it isn't displayed. The setting is Mic Icon Visibility - When Muted. This catches me right away so that I can unmute.

Edit Edit: I discovered, thanks to help from open beta folks, that (as of writing this) you can enable hud>set transparency to 0>enable mic icon in audio settings to be in bottom left position> set its transparency to something visible - this will let you have bottom left mic icon with no other hud elements. Somebody mentioned this does not fix the notifications issue though.

FOR CLARIFICATION, notifications should still be visible while this mode is on. just to be clear.

This would be nice. When I don't want to see the hud, which is always, I would still like to be able to see my mic icon. The hud has just been annoying and in my way when I want to watch something or spend time with friends on desktop. Breaks my desktop flavored virtual immersion because I can't just get all of the hud nonsense out of my view. Compact isn't even compact, it just removes the text but makes nothing smaller.

Minimal should remove the menu and mic buttons that are very easily accessible already for desktop users with one hand. I don't feel like there is a need for those to be clickable buttons as if VRC were a complex MMO or a game playable with just a mouse.