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  • How Do I Get Audacity to Work with MacOS X 10.15 Catalina?

How Do I Get Audacity to Work with MacOS X 10.15 Catalina?

February 27, 2020 / Dave Taylor / Mac & MacOS Help / 6 Comments

I’m confused about what’s going on, but while the audio editing program Audacity seems to work just fine, it isn’t getting any signal from the microphone. I use Audacity a lot to record audio content, so this is a problem! How can I get it working again in MacOS X 10.15 Catalina?

Audacity is a great open source audio recording and editing program beloved by lots of podcasters and musicians alike. It’s simple, designed to do one thing and do that well, and it’s open source so there’s no license fee, no hassles, no cost. All good. Except every so often Apple comes out with an update to MacOS X that breaks the program and MacOS X 10.15 “Catalina” did just that. The issue is that by default the application no longer has permission to access the audio input device (e.g., the microphone). It doesn’t know that, however, so instead of popping up a warning or request for permission, it just gets zero signal and chugs along, thinking it’s recording just fine.

Which is a pretty big problem, as you might expect.

Fortunately there’s a pretty easy workaround to get Audacity back to full functionality in Catalina on your Mac system, though it requires you to put on your geeky command line beanie for just a minute or two. Don’t worry, though, at the end of the article I’ll show you how to make that as easy as possible. To start, though, you’ll want to know how to launch Terminal from Applications. Easiest way is through Spotlight, btw.

But let’s start with Audacity recording, well, nothing:

mac audacity no signal mic audio

Everything looks fine, and it even shows “MacBook Pro Microphone” in the input selection as if it’s all working just dandy. But… nada.

Until the app itself is fixed (I’m guessing it’ll be an install permissions change) the solution is to launch it from the command line instead. I know, so 90’s, eh? To do this, simply launch Terminal. It’s included with all releases of MacOS X, so you’ll have it tucked away in Applications > Utilities, or, as I said, just use Command+Space to get the Spotlight input box and enter “terminal” to launch it.

Those of you who are familiar with the Mac command line interface will immediately launch it as shown in the first entry: “open -a Audacity”. That works and launches Audacity, but.. .nothing’ll be different and it still won’t work:

launch audacity mac macos x catalina command line fix

Instead, use the second invocation, because you want to specifically target the Contents folder’s app. If you want to just copy and paste and have Audacity installed in your regular Applications folder, it’s:

open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

Got it? Audacity will launch, but this time it’ll prompt you for permission to access the mic:

macos x prompt permission access microphone mic catalina audacity

Allow access with the “OK” button and you’re back in business! Audacity will then work just fine:

mac macos x 10.15 catalina audio recording audacity

Quit the program, launch it again with a double click on the app icon, however, and you’re back to square one. So you haven’t “fixed” the problem with this command line invocation, you’ve just figured out an effective workaround.

This means that until the Audacity development team does fix it, you’ll be launching it from the command line every time you want to use the program. A bit tedious but here’s one thing you can do: create what’s known as a command alias in Terminal and next time you can just type ‘audacity’ and have it work right.

audacity alias macos x command line terminal

The first invocation is just to confirm that it works properly (basically what we did earlier), then notice the “alias audacity=” prefix to that complex command. This establishes a command alias called, ingeniously enough, “audacity“. Then the last line shows how to use it; just type in the word and boom! you’re good to go:

alias audacity=/Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

Like it? You can make it a permanent alias for subsequent invocations of Terminal by putting that exact “alias” line into a simple text-only file called “.profile” that would live in your home directory. Got it? And that’s how you get Audacity to work in Catalina until it’s all fixed.

Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about MacOS X and the command line for quite a while. Please check out my extensive Mac help area and command line tutorials too. Heck, I wrote the book on it: Learning Unix for MacOS X! 

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
audacity, audacity fix, audacity mac fix, audacity permissions, mac audacity, microphone access

6 comments on “How Do I Get Audacity to Work with MacOS X 10.15 Catalina?”

  1. Hank says:
    September 18, 2020 at 9:23 pm

    Thank you for the fix! It worked just as you said it would!

    Reply
  2. Yolanda says:
    May 11, 2020 at 12:05 pm

    Went to terminal but the launch did not work. The Audacity app is not showing up in the security & privacy window either. Is there another work around to try?

    Reply
    • Dave Taylor says:
      May 11, 2020 at 5:48 pm

      What happened when you tried to launch the program?

      Reply
  3. GameCrusher218 says:
    May 2, 2020 at 3:51 pm

    This actually worked! Thanks! Also, why is there not a way to manually put audacity into the Microphone permissions? That seems like a flaw with Apple.

    Reply
  4. Richard Watson says:
    April 22, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    With a new iMac Pro and OSX 10.15.4 I get a warning popup when I type in Terminal

    open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

    “Audacity” can’t be opened….developer cannot be confirmed.”

    Nothing else.

    I have used Audacity for many years, but on a PC. Hope they resolve this issue, I miss Audacity. 🙁

    rw

    Reply
    • Dave Taylor says:
      April 23, 2020 at 7:59 am

      Hi Richard. Yes, because Audacity is open source and freely downloaded and installed, it’s not coming onto your Mac through the App Store so MacOS X security is kicking in. The way to solve it after you get that error is to open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General and there should be a prompt offering the ability to approve the program for execution on your Mac!

      Reply

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