This Hidden Apple Tweak Makes You Sound Much Better During Video Calls
You don’t know you sound bad during a FaceTime or Zoom call until someone points it out. If you’re chatting with a particularly polite group, you may never know about it, and your funny stories or inspirational speeches will go unnoticed. If you’re an Apple user and you want your voice to sound as good as possible during video calls, a secret setting can help.
The Hidden Option is a new addition to the Apple ecosystem that was launched with last year’s release of iOS 15 , iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 . This is one of two new microphone settings that help you control the sounds that are sent to the other end of your video and audio calls. While Apple highlighted these features during 2021 software announcements, the options are tucked away and only appear when you’re on a phone call, so they can be hard to find.
Whether you’re using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, the first thing you need to do is start a video call (or at least start a video call). While these options appear when you’re on a call, you can change the settings before someone starts talking. For example, you only need to open the FaceTime app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to find these options, rather than waiting while you’re already chatting with someone.
Whether you’re following this step or on a call, you can find the options in the Control Center. If you did everything right, you should see the “Microphone Mode” option in the top right corner. Select it and you will see three options:
- Standard : Default microphone mode.
- Voice Isolation : Uses machine learning to block out all ambient noise and focus solely on your voice.
- Wide Spectrum : Includes all sounds in the room, ideal for situations where your conversation partners need to hear everything around you (for example, music lessons)
If you want to improve the quality and clarity of your voice during a call, select Voice Isolation. Even if you are in a noisy environment, this mode should help people hear what you have to say. If your environment is already quiet, all the better: you should get through crystal clear.
You should have access to these tools whether you’re receiving calls through FaceTime or a third-party app like Zoom, Teams, or Facebook Messenger. Also, this feature works with audio calls in these apps, but not with standard phone calls. If you call someone with a regular call, you won’t see these options in Control Center, while FaceTime audio calling will allow you to use voice isolation to improve your audio.
Unfortunately, these features are not available on all Apple devices. In addition to being exclusive to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS 12 Monterey, they require special hardware to work. On iOS and iPadOS, these features require at least an A12 Bionic processor. This means you need to have:
- iPhone XR, XS, XS Max or later
- iPad (fifth generation) or later
- iPad Air (3rd generation) or later
- iPad (eighth generation) or later
For Mac, your device must be 2018 or newer. I’m not sure why my late 2016 MacBook Pro can’t run in voice isolation, but apparently Apple’s machine learning is too intensive for my computer.