guide · barking dog
Dog barking on calls? How to keep it off your Mac microphone
Published
A bark is the opposite of a fan hum: sudden, loud and impossible to predict, which is why it gets through filters that handle steady noise well. Here is what helps, starting with the free options.
1. Mute, fast
The quickest fix is the mute shortcut, so you aren’t hunting for the button when the doorbell goes. In Zoom it is ⌘ Shift A; in Teams it is ⌘ Shift M. Zoom can also keep you muted unless you hold the space bar, a setting under Settings → Audio.
2. Close the door, and move the mic closer
A closed door takes a lot out of a bark. A headset or a mic near your mouth helps too: the bark stays as loud as it was, but your voice gets louder against it.
3. Turn your call app’s suppression up
In Zoom, open Settings → Audio and set Background noise suppression to High, the most aggressive level; Zoom notes it can use more CPU. Teams has a similar setting under Settings → Devices, and macOS has Voice Isolation in apps that support Mic Modes (how to turn on Voice Isolation on a Mac). These help in the app you set them in, and nowhere else.
4. Remove barking in every app
Aurio is a noise cancelling microphone for your Mac: it installs “Aurio Microphone”, which any app can pick, and removes background noise on your Mac in real time. The demo below opens on the barking sample: a studio voice recording mixed with a public-domain recording of a dog. Switch between Original and Aurio while it plays.
Barks between your words mostly go. A bark right on top of a word is reduced, not always erased; that overlap is the hardest case for any noise remover. If your dog is a regular on your calls, raise the strength slider.