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I have an orange dot floating in the top-right corner of my display.

I believe that means that a program is using my microphone. Clicking on the dot doesn't do anything, hovering the dot doesn't do anything.

But none of the programs in Preferences > Security & Privacy > Microphone are running, and I've even tried disabling them all but the orange dot didn't disapppear.

I've even installed OverSight as this question and answer suggest (because OverSight is the free option out of OverSight and Micro Snitch), but OverSight didn't identify anything.

OverSight was working: I opened QuickTime to record a movie, and OverSight correctly identified that QuickTime was using the microphone. But when I closed QuickTime, OverSight reports that nothing is using the microphone, even though the orange dot persists.

When quicktime is open, the orange dot was on the control center tray:

enter image description here

When I quit QuickTime, the orange dot moves to the corner of the monitor and floats on top of everything all the time (even full-screen apps):

enter image description here

Here's a gif of what happens to the orange dot when I open and quit quicktime, there's a smooth animation between the two orange dot states:

enter image description here

I've checked Activity Monitor results for "audio", deleted a couple drivers (Zoom's and MSTeams' — apps which had long ago been deleted themselves) from /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL, but nothing is getting rid of the dot.

How can I find out what is causing the orange omnidot?

I'm hoping there will be a deep command line or private framework that might reveal the mystery.

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4
  • First, click on the dot to see whether it shows what process is using the microphone. If not, there are some possible solutions here: discussions.apple.com/thread/253840109 Commented Oct 11, 2024 at 18:52
  • @LincD. someone in that thread said sudo killall coreaudiod, this worked for me. Would you like to make an answer? Commented Oct 11, 2024 at 19:06
  • You failed to mention which build and OS you’re running. If it’s a bug, that level of detail helps everyone greatly and may reduce the chance people vote to close this as a duplicate. Commented Oct 11, 2024 at 19:50
  • You did the work, so you should post the answer and accept it. Commented Oct 11, 2024 at 19:52

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Running

sudo killall coreaudiod

Made the orange dot disappear, but it also messes with running apps that are using the microphone. For example, my experience with QuickTime was that it became a blacked-out, unresponsive (spinning beach ball) window for a few seconds after running this command, then it seemed to restart itself and come back to life with video and mic working as before. But other apps may not suffer through this command so gracefully.

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3
  • If you run this when a legitimate app is using the microphone, does the dot stay illuminated? Commented Oct 14, 2024 at 18:58
  • @bmike I tested with QuickTime recording a movie; it made the dot go away, and it also made the QuickTime window unresponsive and black for a couple seconds, then the video came back up and QuickTime's orange dot reappeared. Commented Oct 14, 2024 at 19:15
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    Thanks. Letting people know this is disruptive to running apps is awesome. Also glad your system glitch could be cleared without ending your login session. Commented Oct 14, 2024 at 19:17

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