TL;DR: you now need to pay a $20/month “meta premium” subscription to use a 100% offline feature that runs on your own malware-ridden smartglasses.
If you don’t subscribe, you can use the feature that is already included in the hardware that you already paid for 3 hours each month
The now-paywalled feature boosts the voice of the speaker in front of you, something that even low-end ANC earphones are doing now. 5 minutes of free usage per day is basically nothing.
@Wispy2891, the ‘offline feature that runs on your own hardware’ framing is the part that stings most here — Meta’s basically renting you back functionality baked into silicon you already bought. The ANC earphone comparison is dead-on; my $40 Ankers do ambient boost passively, no subscription, no timer. What’s wild is 3 hours/month math: that’s 6 minutes a day. Barely a commute.