Now in public preview: Mac Background Noise Suppression

Description

AI-based, real-time noise suppression, is now available in public preview for the Teams Mac desktop client. This feature will automatically remove unwelcome background noise during your meetings. AI-based noise suppression works by analyzing an individual’s audio feed and using specially trained deep neural networks to filter out the noise and retain only the speech signal. This is an update to the existing noise suppression. Users will now have have control over how much noise suppression they want.

Flighting status          

Available to all users in Public Preview channel

How to enable

Noise suppression can be enabled from your user settings, or during a meeting. Please see below for information on how to turn it on.

From the Teams main window:

1. Select your profile picture at the top right of Teams and then select Settings.

Select Devices on the left and then, under Noise suppression, select an option.

Auto (default)  The Teams app decides on the best level of noise suppression based on local noise.

• High  Suppresses all background sound that isn't speech.

Notes: 

• For this option, your computer's processor must support Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2).
• This option is currently not available if the meeting or call is being recorded or live captions is turned on.
• Enabling this option uses more computer resources.

• Low  Suppresses low levels of persistent background noise, such as a computer fan or air conditioner. Use this setting for playing music.

• ​​​​​​​Off  Noise suppression is disabled. Use this setting for high-fidelity microphones in low noise environments.

From a meeting window:

1. Select More options in your meeting controls and then select Device settings.

2. Under Noise suppression, select an option. (See step 2 above for option descriptions.)

For more information about the feature, please visit:  https://aka.ms/noisesuppression 

Note: If you need information about enabling the public preview itself, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.

Microsoft 365 workloads and dependencies

Supported clients and platforms

Known issues

none

Known limitations

This feature is not yet available for Mac machines with an M1 processor.

Enable your Teams client for the public preview 

1. First, IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on Show preview features. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.  
2. Users then choose to join the public preview individually. See Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com) for instructions. 

Summary of public preview features

For a history of features in the Office and Teams public previews, see Release Notes Current Channel (Preview) - Office release notes | Microsoft Docs.

Send us your feedback 

Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help > Give feedback.  

Thank you,

Preview Team Emily Kirby 

Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams