If you have Xbox friends who like to breathe hard into their mic, have loud music blasting in the background, or click loudly on their controllers, the new Xbox noise canceling feature is here to rescue you. Xbox Series X and S owners are getting an update today that includes party chat noise cancellation to remove annoying clicks, background music, and breathing.
Noise cancellation is enabled by default, but Microsoft notes that it’s easy to turn on or off. “If you want to keep certain types of background noise at your parties, such as music, you can also turn the noise cancellation off,” explains one Note on Xbox Support. “Just open the guide, scroll to Parties & Chats and select Options. There you can switch noise reduction on or off.”
Xbox noise cancellation is similar to Discord’s Krisp audio filters and Nvidia’s impressive Broadcast app that allows PC players to filter out background noise.
This new Xbox dashboard update also includes a new way to join friends’ games. “Now the friends you share your game clips and screenshots with can not only view your recordings, they can also start playing right away on their mobile device or PC with cloud gaming,” explains Microsoft. All you have to do is tap play from a clip and you can start playing right in a browser. It’s similar to how Google Stadia lets you share clips and friends jump into games.