Check your mic in seconds. Watch the live level meter react to your voice, record a quick sample, and play it back. Everything runs in your browser.
Nothing is uploaded.Everything runs inside your browser. Your microphone audio never leaves this device and no recording is sent to any server.
Your browser will ask for microphone permission. Audio stays on your device.
This free online mic test tells you in seconds whether your microphone is working, how loud it is, and what it actually sounds like to other people. Click start, allow access, and the live level meter reacts to every word you say. Yellow movement means a healthy signal, a flat bar means silence, and a meter pinned to the red end means the input is too hot and clipping. It is the fastest way to settle the question everyone asks before a call: can you hear me?
Use it before a video meeting, a job interview, a podcast recording, a livestream, or a voice-over session. The device picker lets you switch between a laptop mic, a USB microphone, a headset, or an audio interface so you can compare them side by side and pick the one that reads strongest. The record-and-playback check is the honest test: capture up to ten seconds, play it back, and you hear the same thing your listeners would, including any hiss, echo, or background hum you did not notice while talking.
What sets this tool apart is where your audio goes, which is nowhere. Everything happens locally in your browser through the built-in Web Audio and recording features. Your live level never leaves the page, your recorded sample stays in memory on your own machine, and that sample is thrown away the moment you record again, stop the test, or close the tab. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and no account is required. That matters, because a microphone is one of the most sensitive things you can grant a website access to.
If your mic sounds noisy once you start recording for real, clean it up with our background noise remover or even out the volume with the audio normalizer. Ready to turn a recording into text? Try our audio to text converter or the SRT generator for subtitles.
The mic test is completely free with no limits, because it never touches our servers. Building an app that needs audio processing at scale? See pricing for the SoundHalo audio API.
The most common cause is that the browser never received permission, so click Start and choose Allow when the prompt appears. If nothing happens, make sure a microphone is actually plugged in and enabled in your system sound settings, then pick the right device from the dropdown in the tool. A USB mic or headset sometimes needs a moment to be recognized after you connect it, so unplug and replug it and refresh the page. Finally, close other apps like Zoom, Teams, or Discord that may be holding exclusive control of the mic, since only one program can use it at a time on some systems.
In Chrome or Edge, click the small tune or lock icon at the left end of the address bar, set Microphone to Allow, and reload the page. In Safari, open Safari then Settings, go to Websites, choose Microphone, set this site to Allow, and reload. In Firefox, click the microphone icon in the address bar, remove the existing block, and reload. After changing any of these, run the test again and the level meter should react to your voice.
First move closer to the mic and speak at a normal volume, since distance is the biggest factor. Then open your operating system sound settings and raise the input level or gain for the microphone, and turn off any automatic gain or noise suppression that might be pulling the level down. On a laptop, a built-in mic sits behind the screen and is naturally quiet, so a headset or dedicated mic will read much stronger. If the meter barely moves even when you tap the mic, the wrong device is probably selected in the dropdown, so switch to the correct one.
No. This mic test runs entirely in your browser using the standard Web Audio and MediaRecorder features built into the browser itself. Your live level and any sample you record are processed on your own device and are never sent to SoundHalo or any other server. When you record a sample, it is held only in your browser memory so you can play it back, and it is discarded as soon as you record again, stop the test, or close the tab. That local-only design is the whole point, since most other online mic tests are less clear about where your audio goes.
A headset or dedicated microphone almost always sounds better than a laptop built-in mic. Because the headset mic sits close to your mouth, it captures a stronger, clearer signal with far less room echo and background noise, which matters a lot for calls, recording, and voice work. A built-in mic is fine for a quick chat but tends to sound distant and picks up keyboard clatter and fan noise. Record a short sample with each using the tool above and play them back, and the difference is usually obvious within a few seconds.