Comments on: Disable the internal microphone on your Mac

By: John Oliver

John Oliver — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 22:36:19 +0000

I’ll second the above post… looking for a way to COMPLETELY DISABLE the microphone, so that there is NO WAY for it to “just turn itself back on”, and to lock the slider in the preference pane so a user cannot turn it back on.

By: w.pasman

w.pasman — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 19:52:13 +0000

This is not DISABLING, this is just muting it.

I have a good mic attached but sometimes the mac auto decides to switch back to the built-in. Hard to detect since you still have signals on your recording. Therefore I want to DISABLE the built-in, not just mute it, so that OSX can NEVER re-enable it. How do you do that?

By: dadadadadad

dadadadadad — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:53:18 +0000

we’re talking about internal speakers you dumb ass they can’t just be turned off other than this way

By: Not Madeup

Not Madeup — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 18:11:19 +0000

None of the above stops the internal microphone from even showing that it is constantly listening to what is available to be heard!

By: DMan

DMan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:25:50 +0000

Actually it is the same solution just a different method. If you bring up both the input settings under preferences and and the audio/midi setup at the same time you’ll see that if you adjust the mic levels is system preferences it will automatically adjust the settings in audio/midi to match. Apple programmers tried to make it as simple as possible so you wouldn’t have to go into the utilities folder. So in reality they are both the same solution!

By: Dewan

Dewan — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:38:38 +0000

This IS the solution… not that other crap people are posting.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:14:31 +0000

IS the best answer brother…tasted

By: henry bernard

henry bernard — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:30:45 +0000

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

By: kelahcim

kelahcim — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:38:56 +0000

Check out these two – SoundSource and MuteMyMic. Maybe they will make it easier to adjust the volume.

By: scott v.

scott v. — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:23:28 +0000

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.

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:46:29 +0000

I couldn’t agree more! Absolutely USELESS and completely asinine, the equivalent of telling us to turn the computer on press the power button!

By: sean

sean — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:52:03 +0000

best answer.

By: macdude2778471974

macdude2778471974 — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 04:04:29 +0000

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..

By: Michal

Michal — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:10:26 +0000

I have developed small application that may help you.

MuteMyMic. It can mute/unmute the microphone.

By: harry101

harry101 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:13:38 +0000

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.