Testers
Mic Test (Microphone Test)
Check your microphone with a live waveform before a call or a stream. The audio is read live in your browser and isn't recorded or uploaded.
Microphone level test
Nothing here is recorded or sent anywhere — the audio stays in this browser tab and only ever feeds the meter below, unless you choose to make a short local playback clip further down the page.
Your browser will ask for microphone permission when you press this — nothing happens before then.
Input device
Available once your microphone test above is running.
Record and play back
Available once your microphone test above is running.
Press "Test my microphone" above and your browser will ask for permission — nothing happens before that click, and nothing you say is ever uploaded or saved anywhere outside this browser tab. Once you allow it, watch the level meter while you talk: if it moves, your microphone, your operating system and this browser are all correctly wired together, which is the thing most people searching for a mic test actually need to confirm before a call.
Microphone level test: reading the meter
The bars fill left to right as you speak and fall back down between words, the same way a level meter on a mixing desk does. There's no fixed number to hit — a working microphone should show the bars responding within a fraction of a second of you making any sound at all, from a quiet "testing, testing" to a normal speaking volume. What matters is that the meter reacts to your voice specifically, not that it reaches any particular height.
If you have more than one microphone connected — a laptop's built-in mic alongside a USB headset, for instance — a device selector appears once the test is running, letting you check each one in turn. Switching devices there restarts the level test against the newly selected input, so you can confirm each one independently rather than guessing which one a call app might actually be using.
The meter is the single most common reason people arrive at this page: permission was granted, the microphone looks connected in every system setting, and yet nothing moves. When that happens the page shows a checklist rather than a bare "no sound" message, because "granted but silent" has one of a small number of causes and each has a different fix — the wrong device selected in the dropdown, a mute engaged at the operating-system level, a physical mute switch on the microphone itself, or another application (a call, a recording tool, a second browser tab) already holding the device exclusively. Closing whichever of those applies and pressing the test button again resolves the large majority of "the mic test says it's fine but nobody can hear me" reports.
Record and play back: the "can you hear yourself?" check
A moving meter proves a signal is arriving, but it can't tell you whether that signal actually sounds clear, or whether background noise, clipping or a failing microphone element would bother someone on the other end of a real call. The record-and-playback check answers that directly: press "Record 5 seconds", talk normally, and the clip plays straight back to you the instant it finishes. The recording exists only in this browser tab for as long as the page is open — it's held in memory as a temporary local file, never written to this browser's storage and never sent anywhere, and pressing "Record again" discards the old one before making a new one.
Listen for anything that would make a call awkward rather than for studio-quality sound: a scratchy or muffled tone often points to a microphone positioned too far from your mouth or partially covered; heavy background hiss usually means an input gain set too high in your operating system's sound settings; and any popping on hard consonants is exactly what a cheap foam windscreen or simply speaking slightly off-axis from the microphone fixes. If the clip sounds distinctly different from how you know your own voice usually sounds on calls, trust that over the level meter alone — a meter can be full while the actual audio is unpleasant to listen to.
Before you join a call
Run both checks in the few minutes before a call or a stream rather than during one: confirm the meter responds, then record and listen back once. Both together catch the two different failure modes — no signal at all, and a signal that arrives but sounds worse than it should — and neither leaves any trace once you close this tab.
Questions
- Why can't anyone hear me on Zoom, Discord or Teams even though my mic looks fine?
- The most common cause is that the call app has the wrong input device selected — a laptop's built-in mic, a USB headset and a webcam's microphone can all appear as separate options, and picking the one you're not actually using looks identical to a working mic that simply isn't being read. Run the level test on this page first: if the meter here moves while you talk, your hardware and your operating system are both fine, and the fault is specifically in the call app's own audio settings — check its input device dropdown against what's actually plugged in. If the meter on this page doesn't move either, the problem is upstream of any single app, and the granted-but-silent checklist below covers the usual reasons.
- The browser says my microphone is allowed, but the level meter isn't moving — what's wrong?
- Permission and audio are two separate facts, and a browser granting the first tells you nothing about the second. Work through these in order: confirm the input device selector on this page shows the microphone you actually meant to test, since a laptop with an external mic plugged in sometimes keeps the internal one selected by default; check whether your microphone has a hardware mute button or switch, which several headsets and conference mics have and which a browser cannot see or override; check your operating system's own sound settings for an input that's muted or set to near-zero gain, independently of any browser setting; and close other applications that might already have the microphone open, since most operating systems only let one program read a given microphone at a time and a video call app left running in the background is a common silent cause.
- My browser is blocking microphone access — how do I turn it back on?
- Once you deny a site microphone access, browsers remember that choice and stop asking again automatically, so there's no button on this page that can undo it — the setting lives in the browser itself. Look for a padlock or a small site-information icon at the left edge of the address bar, click it, find "Microphone" in the list of permissions for this site, and change it from "Block" to "Allow". The exact wording differs slightly between Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari, but all four keep per-site microphone permissions in the same place. After changing it, either reload the page or press the test button again.
- It says no microphone was found — I definitely have one, what's going on?
- This is a different failure than a blocked permission: the browser is reporting that the operating system has no audio input device to hand over at all, so there's nothing to allow or deny yet. On a desktop, check that a USB or 3.5mm microphone is actually plugged into the port you think it is, and try a different port if you have one. On a laptop, check your operating system's sound settings for a microphone that has been disabled rather than merely unplugged — Windows and macOS both let a built-in mic be turned off entirely, in which case no browser will ever see it. If you use software that creates virtual audio devices (a streaming mixer, a noise-suppression tool), a crashed or unstarted version of that software can also leave zero real devices visible until it's restarted.
- Does this microphone test record or upload my voice anywhere?
- No. The audio from your microphone is read directly into this page's own Web Audio analyser to draw the level meter, and that connection never leaves your browser tab — there is no upload, no server request and no third party involved at any point. If you use the optional record-and-playback check, the five-second clip is created and played back entirely on your device as a temporary in-memory recording; it's discarded the moment you record again or leave the page, and it's never written to this browser's storage or sent anywhere. You can check this yourself: open your browser's network tab while using this tool and you'll see no requests firing while it runs.
- Why does this tool ask me to record and play back a clip instead of just showing a level meter?
- A level meter only proves that a signal above a certain volume reached the browser — it can't tell you whether that signal actually sounds like a clear human voice, or whether background noise, clipping or a damaged microphone element is distorting it beyond what the person on the other end of a call would find acceptable. Recording five seconds of yourself talking and playing it straight back answers the question a meter can't: does this sound like me? It's the single most convincing check available, short of getting on an actual call with someone else, and it takes about the same five seconds either way.