More than two billion people make calls via WhatsApp daily from the street, public transport, and open offices. Until now, the only solutions were headphones or Krisp — a separate application that costs money and requires setup. Meta decided to embed noise cancellation directly into the messenger.

How it works

The feature appeared in the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.26.14.1 and is currently available to a limited group of testers through Google Play Store. In the call settings, a separate "Noise cancellation" toggle will appear — according to preliminary data, it will be active by default. The algorithm filters out traffic noise, wind, crowd murmur in real-time while preserving the interlocutor's voice.

But there's a detail that's easy to miss.

Enabling noise cancellation improves only how others hear you. How you hear them depends on whether your conversation partner has enabled the feature.

WABetaInfo, according to Business Standard

In other words, the feature works individually on each device, not at the call level. This isn't a bug — it's an architectural decision. But it means that the full effect of "clear on both sides" is only possible if both conversation participants have enabled the toggle and both are on Android.

Why now and why it's not so obvious

Zoom and Microsoft Teams have had noise cancellation for years — but they are tools for corporate environments with paid plans. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is used where Zoom will never appear: a market in Cairo, a marshrutka in Kharkiv, a construction site in Warsaw. It's there that background noise cancellation has the greatest practical value — and it's there that paid solutions never reached before.

• Android and iOS will receive the feature separately — due to differences in audio processing architecture on the platforms
• A broader rollout to Android beta is expected over the coming weeks
• Release timelines for iOS have not been announced yet

What this changes

If the feature is truly active by default, most users will get it without any action on their part — simply after updating. This is rare for settings that affect connection quality: usually they're hidden deep in menus, and 90% of people never know about them.

The real question isn't whether the feature will appear — but how effectively it will work on cheap Android devices with weak processors, where most of WhatsApp's audience lives in the Global South. If the algorithm requires significant computational resources, it could either drain the battery or not work at all in those regions.