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You are here: Home / Not working? / Microphone Not Working In macOS? Fix

Microphone Not Working In macOS? Fix

Last updated on January 25, 2020 By Serhat Kurt 10 Comments

This article explains what you can do if you are having trouble with your microphone features on your Mac. You may experience various sound issues. For example, Siri may not be able to detect your voice; other people may not be able to hear you during a FaceTime call or you may not be able to record audio. The cause of these problems may be the microphone.

Your microphone is an important part of your Mac. Several apps you use and several websites you visit can use the microphone on your Mac to capture or record sound. If your microphone is not working as expected, these websites and apps will be useless.

Configure the microphone settings

On your Mac, go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Sound > Input and select a mic (built-in internal one usually) and check the input levels. Does the input level moves when you say something? If so, that means that your microphone is working.

Mac microphone settings

Restart your Mac

It is simple but effective. Simply restart your Mac to see if your problem is fixed. You can restart your Mac by going to Apple menu > Restart.

Check app permissions

If you are having a microphone issue when you are trying to use a specific app (such as Skype, Hangouts, etc). You can control which apps to allow to access the microphone. Here is how you can control permissions:

  • On your Mac, click Apple menu > System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, then click Privacy.
  • Select Microphone (left menu).
  • And check the box next to an app (e.g. Skype).

Allow microphone access

If giving permissions does not solve it, and if you are having microphone issues for specific apps, like Skype, etc, it is possible that the app itself is faulty. If this is the case, there three two things you can try:

  1. Does this app have a microphone or sound settings? Check these settings and make sure that they are set correctly.
  2. Remove the app from your computer and then reinstall it.
  3. Contact the developer of the app.

Turn on dictation

Enabling Dictation will cause your Mac to download specific audio drivers which may resolve your issue. Here is how you can:

  • Open System Preferences on your Mac.
  • Click Keyboard.
  • Click the Dictation tab.
  • Click On and click Enable Dictation to confirm.

Enable dictation

Reset PRAM

Resetting PRAM (or NVRAM) may fix this problem. Your Mac stores several settings in PRAM. One of the settings is sound. Thus resetting this may help you. Here is how:

  • Turn off your Mac.
  • Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold the Option, Command, P, and R keys together. Keep holding these keys for about 20 seconds.
  • Then release the keys, your computer will restart.

There are several settings that will be erased when you do this like your sound volume, display resolution settings. After you do this, you may want to go to System Preferences and adjust your settings.

Safe Mode

Restart your Mac in Safe Mode. Safe Mode performs certain checks that may fix your problem. Here is how:

  • Turn off your Mac.
  • Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold the Shift key until you see the login screen.
  • Login. You may have to enter your password a few times.
  • Your computer will start in Safe Mode. Does your microphone work now?
  • In either case (working or not working), restart your Mac normally. This time do not press any keys while starting.
  • Your computer will exit Safe Mode.
  • Check again now if your Microphone starts working.

So you tried everything and nothing helped you? You may be having a hardware problem. You may want to make a Genius Bar appointment and take your computer to Apple to check.

See also: How To Add or Remove Microphone Button on iPhone or iPad Keyboard

Filed Under: Not working? Tagged With: Microphone

Comments

  1. Wendy Roby says

    September 24, 2020 at 10:20 am

    This (turning on dictation) worked for me on iMac, thanks so much

    Reply
  2. AJ says

    September 21, 2020 at 9:51 am

    Cheers buddy – Dictation click fixed it!!

    Reply
  3. Eran says

    September 14, 2020 at 9:02 pm

    0

    I just solved the exact same problem on a 2017 MacBook Air, which appears to have two separate microphone holes on the left side of the computer. After noticing that tapping the side of the case by the microphone holes generated sound (and level readings in system preferences) I followed the advice which I found elsewhere online and cleaned the microphone holes very gently with a sewing pin. Because I was afraid to pierce the internal membrane I inserted the pin only a little bit, less than 0.5 mm, and ran it around the circumference of the hole to dislodge the crusty debris that I could now see was in the hole. This worked perfectly and my microphone appears to be working 100% now after months of carting an external USB microphone around.

    Reply
  4. mohssine says

    August 30, 2020 at 10:41 am

    Thank you. It worked ! the dictation trick is awesome

    Reply
  5. Felipe O. says

    August 4, 2020 at 5:06 am

    I just got a brand new JBL Quantum 200 and I Have a MacBook Pro 2017, 13″.

    The headphones work good, but the MIC it is not recognized by the laptop…I tried everything on this post and nothing works…just for a few seconds the mic appeared on the MIDI Config, but no more 🙁

    Please, help!

    Reply
    • apta says

      August 10, 2020 at 10:50 pm

      I was having input microphone issues on MBP High Sierra. QuickTime recognized the input and could record. But Siri failed to recognize the internal microphone. I launched Activity Monitor and forced quit all processes with “audio” in their name. Siri immediately recognize the mike and responded.

      Reply
      • Zach says

        December 10, 2020 at 5:49 pm

        I have a pair of JBL 400BT’s with a similar issue – I can’t get the microphone to work all, although audio in works just fine. I used mictests.com to try and test it, but when I did it came up with an error message saying “The audio track is paused”.

        Curious if you get a similar result.

        Reply
  6. Raj says

    May 13, 2020 at 4:19 am

    Yep.. working .. thanks for the article

    Reply
  7. Tanuj Bawa says

    April 15, 2020 at 6:31 am

    Tried everything but input Mic on my iMac volume very very low. Need help to make it work.

    Reply
    • Leslie says

      May 17, 2020 at 4:35 pm

      https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-imac-internal-microphone-very-low.2131122/

      Reply

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