GitHub - yigitkonur/cli-fix-my-mic: stop AirPods from stealing your Mac's microphone — CoreAudio daemon, zero CPU

macOS silently switches your mic to AirPods every time they connect. your voice goes from studio-quality 48kHz to walkie-talkie 16kHz mono. this fixes that.

compiles from source on your machine, installs a background daemon, no sudo needed. run the same command again to change settings or uninstall.

demo

what it does

~600-line Swift daemon that talks directly to CoreAudio. no dependencies, no electron, no python, no node. just Apple frameworks.

• event-driven, not polling — registers CoreAudio listeners, fully idle at 0.0% CPU between events
• finds built-in mic by transport type — works on MacBook Pro, Air, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio
• blocks Bluetooth input — classic, LE, and iPhone Continuity mic. USB mics left alone
• defeats AirPods HFP flip-backs — re-asserts built-in mic every 0.5s for 5 seconds after a change, then goes idle
• Apple Unified Logging — uses os_log, system handles rotation

install

don't have node? use curl:

curl -fsSL https://yigitkonur.com/disable-airpods-mic.sh | bash

or clone it:

git clone https://github.com/yigitkonur/cli-fix-my-mic.git && cd cli-fix-my-mic && ./install.sh

requires macOS 12+ and Xcode Command Line Tools (installer prompts if missing).

two modes

the installer asks you to pick:

always block (default)

built-in mic is always the default. AirPods and Bluetooth mics never used as input. install and forget.

respect manual override

same as above, but if you switch back to AirPods within 10 seconds of mic-guard reverting it, it pauses for 1 hour then resumes. for when you actually need your AirPods mic on a call.

usage

mic-guard pause           # pause indefinitely
mic-guard pause 30        # pause for 30 min, auto-resumes
mic-guard resume          # back to blocking
mic-guard status          # what's going on?

# logs
log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.local.mic-guard"' --style compact

# restart
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.local.mic-guard

# stop until next login
launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.local.mic-guard

resource usage

uninstall

run the install command again and pick "uninstall":

or manually:

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/com.local.mic-guard
rm ~/.local/bin/mic-guard
rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.mic-guard.plist
rm -rf ~/.config/mic-guard

why not a GUI app?

there are apps that do this — SoundAnchor, AirPods Sound Quality Fixer, audio-device-blocker. they work, but need code signing or xattr -cr to bypass Gatekeeper, run a menu bar icon, and require manual download.

this compiles from source on your machine (born trusted), runs as a headless launchd agent, and is a single Swift file you can read in 5 minutes.

internals

single file: main.swift. only Apple frameworks (CoreAudio, Foundation, os.log). compiles with swiftc — no Xcode project, no Package.swift, no SPM.

key CoreAudio APIs:

• AudioObjectAddPropertyListener — event callbacks
• AudioObjectGetPropertyData / SetPropertyData — read/write device properties
• kAudioHardwarePropertyDefaultInputDevice — system default input
• kAudioDevicePropertyTransportType — distinguish built-in from Bluetooth

license

MIT