Schrödinger's Microphone: Google Meet Says Muted, iOS Says Otherwise
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Horizontally stitched screenshots showing a Google Meet call on the iPhone where the microphone mute icon is highlighted in active mute status while the lock screen displays a mute icon which is not selected and inactive.
I'm not sure you understand. There is a mute functionality in Meet and there is one in iOS. This is so that you can have different apps with different states of mute. The OS level control is there so you can mute the mic for all apps at the same time.
Yup. iOS mute is like a hardware mute (not really, but the “reach” is the same) in that it mutes for everything, everywhere on the phone. Meet mute is only for that program.
I have done it before: on a Signal audio call between multiple people, and had to do a really quick look-up while my hands were busy. Put the call on mute, flipped over to my browser, hit the “speech to text” icon below the keyboard and verbally put in my query.
With a global microphone shut-off, I couldn’t have done a speech-to-text Google query while being muted on a call.
Fine-grained control like this exists because being limited to a global mute is fundamentally hostile usability where multiple apps can be used at (mostly) the same time.
Think of it another way: does your house have light switches in every room, or do you turn all your lights on or off by going to the electrical panel and toggling the master switch for the whole house?
You’re complaining about “why are there light switches in every room when the electrical panel has this one, big, fat switch at the very top that turns everything off.” Yes, your complaint is exactly like this.
Muting the mic through the iPhone control panel mutes the mic across the entire phone.
It’s all dependent on the locus of control. An app does not control the mic across all apps, it only controls the mic within itself. The iPhone control panel, however, is the absolute master control: it controls the mic before any app.
Signal operated the exact same way as Google Meet:
Slack was slightly different in that it 1:1 syncs mute states, but across Meet/Slack/Signal, my mic disables and I can’t use it no matter where I mute.