Microphone test
Check that your microphone works, see your real input level, and find out which device your browser actually opened — all in your browser, with nothing recorded or uploaded.
Last reviewed on August 26, 2026
Check that your microphone works, see your real input level, and find out which device your browser actually opened — all in your browser, with nothing recorded or uploaded.
Last reviewed on August 26, 2026
The tool above reads your microphone directly through the browser's Web Audio API. There is nothing to install and no account to create, and the audio never leaves your computer — it is analysed in the page and discarded frame by frame.
If both react, your microphone is working and the operating system, browser, and device are all wired up correctly. If either stays flat, the section below tells you which one is at fault.
Nothing is recorded. This test analyses the live signal only. If you want to hear yourself back, use the record and playback tool — that clip also stays on your device and disappears when you close the tab.
A microphone test is only useful if you know what "good" looks like. Here is how to interpret each part of the display.
Each bar is a slice of the frequency spectrum. Speech energy is concentrated between roughly 100 Hz and 4 kHz, so when you talk you should see the left and middle bars move most. Bars that never move at all mean no signal is arriving. Bars that are permanently near maximum, even in silence, mean the input gain is far too high or a noise source (a fan, an air conditioner, a buzzing cable) is dominating.
This is a peak meter scaled from silence to full scale.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Flat at 0% | No signal reaching the browser | Wrong input selected, permission denied, or device muted |
| Barely moves (under 15%) | Signal is present but very weak | Move closer, raise input gain, check for a mute switch on the cable or boom |
| Peaks around 40–75% | Healthy speaking level | Nothing — this is the target |
| Pinned near 100% | Clipping; the signal is being cut off | Lower system input gain to 50–75% and disable "mic boost" |
| Moves without you speaking | Room or electrical noise | Check fans, USB power, and cable routing; see the dB meter |
Once the test is running, the panel shows which device the browser actually opened, along with its sample rate and channel count. This matters more than people expect: laptops often expose four or five "microphones" — the internal array, a headset, a webcam, and virtual devices created by meeting apps. If the device name is not the microphone you meant to use, change the default input in your system sound settings and restart the test.
A sample rate of 44,100 Hz or 48,000 Hz is normal. Anything unusually low, such as 16,000 Hz, usually means a Bluetooth headset has switched into its hands-free calling profile — see why Bluetooth microphones sound bad.
Work through these in order. They are ranked by how often each one turns out to be the cause.
Still stuck after all five? The step-by-step microphone troubleshooting guide covers browser-specific and driver-level fixes.
The test works in any browser that supports getUserMedia over HTTPS, which covers current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi on desktop, plus Chrome and Safari on Android and iOS.
A quick check tells you whether the microphone works. Getting a result that predicts how you will actually sound on a call takes a little more care.
The microphone stream is created in your browser, connected to an analyser node, and read as numbers to drive the display. It is never written to disk, never buffered, and never sent to any server — the site has no upload endpoint to send it to. When you press stop, close the tab, or switch away from the page, the stream is released and the browser's recording indicator turns off. Full details are in our privacy policy.
Yes. There is no sign-up, no download, and no limit on how often you can run it.
No. The microphone signal is analysed in your browser to drive the waveform and level meter, then discarded. There is no upload endpoint, and the site could not store your audio even if it wanted to.
In order of likelihood: the browser permission is blocked, the wrong input device is selected at the system level, another application is holding the microphone exclusively, or a hardware mute switch is engaged.
Peaks around 40 to 75 percent of the meter. Below 15 percent is too quiet and forces automatic gain to amplify room noise; pinned at 100 percent means the signal is clipping.
Yes, in Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android. In-app browsers inside social media apps often block microphone access entirely, so open the page in a real browser if no permission prompt appears.
Laptops expose several inputs — an internal array, a headset, a webcam microphone, and virtual devices created by meeting apps. Change the default input in your system sound settings and restart the test.