Voice isolation on macOS

[wolruf]

On macOS, when using apps like Google Meet with audio/video conferences, Safari is able to trigger the macOS mic panel to use "voice isolation" which is super handy to decrease background noise. I know there are special apps, headsets to minimize such noise I prefer to minimize the number of applications.

I'm not sure if this is dependent on the browser, on the app. I didn't find anything in bugzilla. There's a Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/ye9f6q/ventura_finally_added_universal_voice_isolation/

How to test:

- load https://webrtc.github.io/test-pages/src/single-audio/

- check macOS toolbar if mic becomes "Orange" and has the ability to use "voice isolation" as per screenshot.

[Jon]

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[pehrsons]

Hi, Firefox media engineer here.

The mic control panel on macOS should pop up automatically when an app accesses the mic. We have also noted it sometimes doesn't, but we believe it has improved in recent versions. We have been working to hook up the built-in voice processing in macOS for microphone access (currently enabled in 128 Nightly). Plausibly some patch along the way there improved the situation.

[wolruf]

Thanks, indeed, I just tested a nightly build 128.0a1 (2024-06-09) and it triggers the mic "voice isolation" (and even wide spectrum) using macOS 14.5.1.