Apple has its video calling app, FaceTime, which has a hidden feature that makes your audio and video calls look better with less noise.
The company introduced several new features with iOS 15 recently and this is one of them. This feature works across most iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices as long as you're using iOS 15 or macOS Monterey.
It is available on iPhone SE 2020, iPhone SE 3, iPhone XR, iPhone Xs and all later versions, including the iPhone 12 series and iPhone 13 series.
This feature, called sound isolation, is hidden in the Control Center and has the ability to instantly improve microphone quality during calls.
And when you want to hear your voice clearly in a FaceTime call while filtering out other sounds, you can turn on sound isolation mode. The Sound Isolation mode prioritizes your voice in a FaceTime call and blocks out ambient noise.
The feature allows the microphone to focus on your voice through machine learning and suppresses ambient noise. But it is difficult to find.
You can only access it when you are on a call. You can swipe down from the top-right corner (or click the button in the top-right corner of your Mac) to get to Control Center, and then click the "Mic Mode" button.
This option is set by default to Standard mode. But there are two more options: sound insulation and broad spectrum.
Apple hides the feature in the Control Center
The broad spectrum option allows the other people on your call to hear more background noise. But the sound insulation option is a useful option.
When you enable sound isolation, your device starts processing sound in order to remove background noise. As a result, it appears that you are holding your phone in front of your face even when you are not.
Although the feature is useful, there are two problems with sound insulation. The first problem is that the option is not a global one, and as a result you have to enable it in every app that you use to make calls. The second problem is that it does not work with all applications.
Apple provides sound isolation through an API across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, but not every app supports it.
WhatsApp, Snapchat, Slack, Signal and Instagram applications support the feature, but Tik Tok does not. There is also no way to turn the feature on for any in-browser apps.
This means that it is not supported by Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, along with a few other applications. There are also no microphone modes for regular phone calls.