Hearing yourself or an echo in your microphone?

Work out which echo you have

Two different problems get called echo, and they have different fixes.

Check with the microphone test

Open the microphone test and wear headphones.

1. Click Start microphone and speak. The test does not play your voice back live. If you hear yourself as you talk, something on your computer or headset is monitoring the microphone.
2. Click Record clip, say a sentence, then stop and play it back.
3. If the recording is clean with headphones on, your microphone is fine and the echo others hear comes from your speakers.
4. Repeat with the headphones unplugged and the speakers on, staying silent while a video plays in another tab. If the level bar moves, the microphone is hearing the speakers.

Turn off monitoring on Windows

1. Open Settings → System → Sound and choose More sound settings.
2. On the Recording tab, double-click your microphone.
3. On the Listen tab, untick Listen to this device and select OK.
4. On the Playback tab, double-click your headset, open Levels, and mute any entry named Microphone or Sidetone if one is listed.

Many gaming and office headsets also have a sidetone slider in the maker's app, and some have a physical monitoring dial on the cable or ear cup.

Turn off monitoring on a Mac

macOS does not have a system-wide "listen" switch, so the source is an app or the hardware. Check the headset maker's app for sidetone. If you use a USB audio interface or mixer, turn down its Direct Monitor or Mix knob. Recording apps such as GarageBand have a monitoring button on each track, which should be off unless you want to hear yourself.

Stop speaker bleed

1. Use headphones. This removes the path from speaker to microphone completely and is the only certain fix.
2. Lower the speaker volume and move the microphone further from the speakers, pointing away from them.
3. Leave echo cancellation on. Calling apps cancel echo by default. If you have switched to an "original sound" or music mode, switch back.
4. Pick the right microphone. A laptop's built-in microphone sits next to its speakers. A headset microphone picks up far less.

Doubled devices

If two laptops or a laptop and a phone are in the same call in the same room, each one hears the other's speaker and sends it back. Mute the microphone and speaker on all but one device. The same thing happens if you join a call in a browser tab and in the desktop app at once, so check for a second copy of the meeting.

If it is still there

Ask the other people in the call to mute one at a time. Echo is produced at the end where the sound is being re-recorded, so the person who cannot hear the echo is usually the one causing it.