Fix · Safari

Microphone not working in Safari on a Mac

Safari keeps a separate microphone setting for every website — Ask, Deny or Allow — and a call cannot hear you until that site is allowed.

What you are seeing

You are in a video call in Safari on a Mac and people cannot hear you, or Safari never even asked whether the site could use your microphone.

The likely causes, most common first

Work down the list; most people find theirs in the first two.

1. The site is set to Deny

  1. Open Safari → Settings → Websites, choose Microphone on the left, and find the site in the list.
  2. Set it to Ask or Allow. While it says Deny, Safari will not even ask, and the call stays silent.

Apple: “Deny: The site can’t use your microphone.” — support.apple.com/guide/safari/websites-ibrwe2159f50/mac

2. It asked, and the answer was no

  1. With Ask, Safari asks each time you visit. If you clicked Don’t Allow by mistake, reload the page and allow it this time.

Apple: “Ask: The site must ask if it can use the microphone on your Mac.” — support.apple.com/guide/safari/websites-ibrwe2159f50/mac

3. You cannot tell whether it is listening

  1. Open Control Center at the top right of the screen. A recording light there shows when an app or site is using the microphone.
  2. If nothing lights up while you talk in the call, the site still is not getting your microphone — go back to the setting above.

Apple: “The Recording Indicator light in Control Center shows when your computer’s microphone is in use or has been used recently.” — support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-the-microphone-on-mac-mchla1b1e1fe/mac

4. You want it to stop asking

  1. For a site you meet on every day, choose Allow in the same list, and Safari will stop asking each visit. Keep Ask for sites you only use now and then.

Apple: “Allow: The site can always use your microphone.” — support.apple.com/guide/safari/websites-ibrwe2159f50/mac

5. Another app has the microphone

  1. If a desktop app such as Zoom or Teams is open in another call, close it before you join from Safari, so the two do not compete for the same microphone.

Apple: “Some apps and websites can use the microphone on your Mac to capture or record audio.” — support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-the-microphone-on-mac-mchla1b1e1fe/mac

Every quote above is from Apple’s own help pages, read on 10 November 2026. Something changed? Tell us.

The longer guide, with more detail →

Other Safari problems

Camera not workingSafari lets each website use the camera only if you say so, under its Websites settings, and only one app on the Mac can hold the camera at a time.Transcript missingA Google Meet transcript is saved to the organiser’s Drive, only starts from a computer or an Android phone, and waits for the host to join on the web.Recording missingGoogle Meet saves recordings to the organiser’s Drive, only records from a computer or an Android phone, and stops by itself after eight hours.Notes or summary missingGoogle’s automatic notes need an eligible plan, a meeting of about fifteen minutes or more in one supported language, and somebody from the host’s organisation to start them.Breakout rooms missingBreakout rooms in Google Meet need an eligible Workspace edition and a host on a computer, and Google never records what happens in them.No sound, or people cannot hear youMost Google Meet sound problems are one of four things: the browser was not allowed the microphone, you are muted somewhere, the wrong speaker is chosen, or you joined in Companion mode.

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