Not every room lets you
turn the speaker on
Shoulder Surf began by listening through your iPhone's microphone, which works beautifully when the call is coming out of your computer's speakers. Plenty of people cannot do that. You might be on a headset in an open-plan office, or at a shared desk where the conversation next to you should never end up in your transcript. So there is more than one way to get the meeting in.
Four ways to hear the meeting
Pick the one that matches the room you are actually sitting in. You can change it per meeting.
Built-in microphone
The default, and nothing to buy. Set the phone on the desk and it hears the room. Best when the call is playing through your computer's speakers, or when everyone is sitting with you.
Camera only, microphone off
Turn the microphone off completely and Shoulder Surf reads the meeting's own on-screen captions through the rear camera instead. Nothing is captured as audio at all. This is the one for rooms where recording is not on the table.
Through your headset
Audio arrives from a USB-C accessory rather than the built-in microphone, so the room itself is never recorded. The desk next to you stays out of your transcript, and a noise-isolating headset stops working against you.
Headset and room together
Both at once. The accessory carries the call while the built-in microphone keeps the room, and the two arrive as one synchronized recording. This is the one for a desk where some people are on the call and some are sitting beside you.
Which one do you want?
Four questions, and you will land on the right one.
Built-in microphone. Put the phone down and start.
Camera only. The microphone stays off and it reads the captions on your screen.
Through your headset. Nothing acoustic, so nobody nearby is picked up.
Headset and room together, so neither half of the conversation goes missing.
The hardware we are testing
For the two headset modes you need one small box between your headset and your computer. This is the chain we are validating, shared so you can follow along. It is not a supported accessory yet, and you do not need any of it for the first two modes.
A wired 3.5mm TRRS headset, the ordinary kind with a microphone on it.
Sits between your headset and your computer and sums your own microphone together with the person on the call into a single output. This is the part that actually solves the problem. A plain Y splitter will not do it, because it has no way to combine the two directions.
Carries that combined output into your iPhone. Apple's own adapter works, and so do the usual third-party ones.