You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
I feel like they're trying to make an insidious suggestion about the usage of these. IMO, there's likely a good reason - user experience.<p>At a hardware level, grabbing the microphone can take time. Even worse that timing is inconsistent across devices, workloads, etc. That leads to a bad experience when unmuting and needing to delay your commentary. The solution to this is to keep the microphone on, but mute at a software level. This way the mic is always hot and ready to relay audio as fast as the software can switch.<p>I'd be somewhat willing to bet continue to stream audio is also a quality assurance mechanism. Some networks will shape traffic according to load. A quick jump in bandwidth can introduce unexpected jitter and latency. By continuing to stream audio (but not necessarily process or re-transmit), video conferencing can better ensure an un-interupted experience.<p>----<p>With that being said, if you really care about privacy, consider getting a hardware mute microphone.