Test your microphone
Check your microphone in seconds: live level meter, device picker and a five-second record-and-playback loop. Nothing is transmitted.
- Runs in your browser
- Files are never uploaded
- Free, no account
Press the button and allow microphone access. Echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain are all switched off so you see the raw signal.
Your browser hides device names until microphone access has been allowed once.
What a good result looks like
Speak at your normal volume. The level bar should sit somewhere between 40% and 80% and move with your voice, and the waveform should show clear peaks and troughs rather than a flat line or a solid block. Then run the five-second loop: if you can hear yourself played back clearly, every link in the chain works — microphone, driver, browser permission, encoder, and your speakers.
Noise suppression, echo cancellation and automatic gain are all switched off deliberately. Those algorithms are good enough to manufacture a plausible-looking signal out of a broken one, or to gate a very quiet microphone into complete silence, and a diagnostic that lies is worse than no diagnostic.
The meter is flat — work through this in order
- Hardware mute. Headset inline controls, the mute button on a USB microphone, the F4 key on many laptops, and the physical switch on some webcams. This is by a wide margin the most common cause.
- Wrong device. Plugging in headphones often switches the default input to the headset microphone, which may be pointing at your chest. Try each entry in the device list here.
- Operating-system privacy setting. Windows: Settings → Privacy and security → Microphone, and check both the global toggle and the "let desktop apps access" one below it. macOS: System Settings → Privacy and Security → Microphone, and tick your browser.
- Input volume. Windows: Sound settings → the device → Input volume. macOS: Sound → Input. A slider left at zero looks identical to broken hardware.
- Another program holding the microphone. Zoom, Teams, Discord, OBS and Skype can claim exclusive access on Windows. Quit them fully — several keep running in the system tray.
- Browser permission. Click the padlock or microphone icon in the address bar. If access was blocked once, the browser remembers and will not ask again.
- The port. A 3.5 mm headset in a headphone-only jack gives you audio out and nothing in. Laptops with a single combo jack need a headset with a four-pole TRRS plug.
It works here but not in my meeting app
This is the most useful thing the test can tell you, and it is good news. If the meter moves on this page, the microphone, its driver and the operating system are all fine. The problem is inside the other application, and it is almost always device selection.
- Zoom: Settings → Audio → Microphone. Use "Test Mic" there too, and check that "Automatically adjust microphone volume" is not fighting you.
- Microsoft Teams: the three-dot menu → Settings → Devices. Teams frequently defaults to a monitor’s built-in microphone.
- Discord: User Settings → Voice and Video. Check the input device, then the input sensitivity slider — automatic sensitivity mis-calibrates often, and switching to manual with the threshold well left fixes most "nobody can hear me" reports.
- Google Meet and other browser apps: the same browser permission model as this page. If it works here, grant it there through the address-bar icon.
Reading the level meter properly
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Bar never leaves zero | No signal at all reaching the browser | Work through the checklist above |
| Bar twitches under 10% | Signal present but far too quiet | Raise the input gain; move closer; check you are not on the wrong microphone |
| Bar sits at 40–80% on speech | Healthy | Nothing |
| Bar pins at 100% | Clipping — the waveform is being flattened at the top | Lower the input gain or back away; clipping cannot be fixed later |
| Bar moves steadily with nobody speaking | Constant background noise | Find the fan or air conditioner; consider a directional or headset mic |
Why the device names are missing
Before a page has been granted microphone access, browsers deliberately hide device labels — the list of hardware attached to your machine is a strong fingerprinting signal, so it is withheld from sites that have no business knowing it. Once you allow access once, the real names appear. Firefox and Safari are stricter about this than Chrome.
Nothing here is transmitted, and you can prove it
Every mic-test page on the internet claims privacy. Here is how to check this one in ten seconds: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and run the whole test including the five-second recording. There are no requests. Or simpler — switch off Wi-Fi first, then run it; everything still works, because there is nothing on the other end.
Structurally: this is a static site with no backend, and its Content-Security-Policy allows no
third-party origin in connect-src. The analysis runs in the Web Audio API and the
five-second clip is a Blob in this tab’s memory, played back from there and discarded on
reload.
Next steps
If the microphone checks out and you want to actually record something, the voice recorder has pause and resume, no time limit and MP3 or WAV export. To check the other half of a video call, use the webcam test, which measures the real delivered frame rate as well as the resolution.
Questions
The meter moves but a meeting app still cannot hear me.
That is good news: the hardware, the driver and the browser permission all work. The problem is inside that app — it is listening to a different input device. Open its audio settings and select the same microphone shown in the device list here.
The meter is completely flat.
Work through it in order: a hardware mute switch or a muted headset inline control, the wrong device selected below, the operating system’s microphone privacy setting, and the input volume slider in your sound settings. A flat meter with permission granted is almost never a browser fault.
Why do you switch off noise suppression?
Because a test should show what the microphone actually sends. Chrome’s noise suppression and automatic gain will happily manufacture a clean-looking signal from a broken one, or gate out a very quiet mic entirely. The raw stream tells you the truth.
Is the five-second recording saved or sent anywhere?
It exists only as a Blob in this tab’s memory and is played back from there. Reloading or closing the page destroys it. Nothing is written to disk and no request is made — the page has no upload path in its code and the site’s Content-Security-Policy allows no third-party origin.
Which browser should I use for the most accurate result?
Any current Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari over HTTPS will do. The one meaningful difference is device names: Firefox and Safari are stricter about revealing them until permission has been granted, so the device list may show generic labels until you allow access once.