Disable the internal microphone on your Mac
If you want to disable the internal microphone on your Mac, you can through two methods, reducing the input volume or selecting a different and nonexistent audio input:
Disable the internal microphone by reducing the input volume to 0
* Launch System Preferences
* Click on “Sound”
* Click on the “Input” tab
* Drag the “Input volume” slider all the way to the left, as seen in the above screenshot
* Close System Preferences
This works just by reducing the audio input to zero, effectively making the internal microphone unable to capture any sound. If you want to basically disable the internal microphone’s ability to hear audio, use the below method instead.
Disable the internal microphone by selecting a different audio input
* Launch the System Preferences
* Click on “Sound”
* Click on the “Input” tab
* Select “Line-in”
* Close System Preferences
This works by changing the audio input to the line-in, also known as the audio input port on your Mac. As long as you don’t actually have any audio input device connected, such as an external microphone or some other line-in device, this method is very effective.
Also, if you have the sound icon in the menu bar, you can option-click it to change input/output sources from there.
This is, unquestionably, the most useless and banal “hot tip” I have ever read on any Mac forum.
I couldn’t agree more! Absolutely USELESS and completely asinine, the equivalent of telling us to turn the computer on press the power button!
I have to agree with Bugs, what is the point of this tip and who actually considers it a “hot tip”?
This is stupid just mute the speakers or turn them off who doesn’t know this???
For security reasons this is a Hot Tip.
My 13″ MBP unibody doesn’t have a Line-in jack. Too bad there isn’t an app with a simple little button that I can click on so my camera and mic are disabled enough to meet NSA security requirements.
Here’s my problem. The above tip noted:
“As long as you don’t actually have any audio input device connected, such as an external microphone or some other line-in device, this method is very effective.”
I DO need to attach an external microphone, and I DON’T want the internal microphone to be working at the same time.
Is there a mute switch somewhere for just the internal mic?
The reason why people need to turn off the internal mike is to record through another source such as USB without getting environmental sounds on top of the recording. People are complaining about this problem all over the internet.
The line-in tip works on my PowerBook running OS 10.4, where the non-existent “line-in” can be selected as an alternative to “internal microphone”. On my sister’s mac, running OS 10.6, “line-in” does not appear as a choice and cannot be selected.
I have developed small application that may help you.
MuteMyMic. It can mute/unmute the microphone.
Go to Audio/Midi setup in the Applications utility folder and mute the inputs, that way the mic will be turned off, and not just turned down a few decibels..
best answer.
some of your comments were ignorant. I have a 2nd grade class that I teach at a deaf school. They use sign language and they are required to videorecord themselves, where the sound is not vital to language development. Therefore, imagine when there are sounds associated with the sign language and some of them like to turn on the microphone to annoy and they don’t know any better.
Thank you.
Check out these two – SoundSource and MuteMyMic. Maybe they will make it easier to adjust the volume.
How to disabled the mic on a mac. Your internal mic is on by default also the built in speakers. goto system tag the speaker cymbal, goto input and tag line in then tag line in . If you have a built in camera and mic at the top center tap on the left of the camera where the mic is and you shouldn’t see any bars indicating sound is present. If this is true now you know how to disable the mic so that it will not be heard while recording. Caution!!!! You must check all preferences in all other programs and make sure your device is tagged and that you have APPLIED it before closing. You then may need to close the program and then go back in to see that out the changes are correct.sometimes restarting helps. Helpful hint always tap the mic on you monitor while record is enabled making sure the mic is not being record on your trac. hope this helps