Not certain, but just 4 apps have mic access here (BirdNET, Discord, Signal, Whatsapp). What you suggest seems like an obvious feature though. Unfortunately I

Not certain, but just 4 apps have mic access here (BirdNET, Discord, Signal, Whatsapp). What you suggest seems like an obvious feature though. Unfortunately I found if you can't do something on iOS, you really can't do it unless you jailbreak. That said disabling background access does really quit most (all?) app activity some time after you switch apps. It's not a perfect mitigation, but such is the cost of buying into closed ecosystems :( Edit: The other answers suggest something else is probably at play, so disregard this.