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You are here: Home / Mac / Bluetooth headphones sound issues on MacBook? Try these fixes

Bluetooth headphones sound issues on MacBook? Try these fixes

By Mike Peterson 37 comments Last updated April 22, 2020

Bluetooth headphones are convenient, and in most cases sound just as good as their wired counterparts. But what happens when they just sound terrible on some devices?

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According to a slew of user reports, Bluetooth headphone experience a drastic drop in quality when connected to macOS (even if they sounded fine when used with an iPhone).

Here’s why — and how to fix it.

What causes this drop in audio quality?

 

macOS Bluetooth
You might notice a drop in audio quality when connecting Bluetooth headphones to a Mac. It’s because macOS defaults to a lower-quality audio codec.

Why do Bluetooth headphones often sound worse when you connect them to a Mac? In a nutshell, it’s because of the audio codec.

Most modern Macs try to use the AAC audio codec with audio devices. It’s Apple’s preferred codec and is objectively higher-quality than the SCO or SBC codecs.

But occasionally, Bluetooth-connected devices will “fall back” to the SCO or SBC codec. This typically happens when macOS thinks you’re going to use the built-in microphone on a Bluetooth device (actually the device’s external microphone).

That’s why a good pair of Bluetooth headphones will often sound worse when connected to a Mac than an iPhone. It’s also why more in-depth attempts to fix the audio quality, such as terminal commands or resetting the SMC, won’t alleviate the issue.

Some users may not notice the drop in quality, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. Unfortunately, there aren’t many easy, native ways to prevent Bluetooth devices from defaulting to the lower-quality codecs. But there are a couple of workarounds that you can use to force macOS to use AAC whenever possible.

Don’t use the microphone

Bluetooth Headphone Sound issues on MacBook
Go to the Sound preferences menu and make sure that the input device is set to the built-in Mac microphone (if applicable).

First thing’s first: check to see if your Mac defaulted to using your headphone mic as the input device.

This commonly happens when using AirPods. Even if the headphones use AAC codec when they’re first connected, they can switch to a lower-quality codec if you open an app that uses microphones.

One of the easiest ways to deal with this is to simply switch the microphone input to the built-in microphone on your device.

You can do that by going to System Preferences —> Sound. Select the Input tab and make sure that the input device is set to the Mac Microphone. It’ll say, for example, MacBook Air Microphone or MacBook Pro Microphone.

If you have the volume icon in your menu bar, you can option-click it and change the default input device to the baked-in microphone.

It’s worth noting that if your Mac doesn’t have a built-in microphone to switch to, use another microphone that is not connected to your Bluetooth headphones. If you don’t, you may need to pursue some of the other solutions below.

Kill apps or system settings that are listening in

One of the most effective solutions is an unlikely strategy that a reader stumbled upon. Essentially, you’ll want to find and kill apps or system functions that use a microphone.

Check Dictation settings

In the reader’s case, it was the native Dictation feature that caused macOS to switch to the lower-quality codec.

That may be the case for you — just go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation and turn dictation off (or toggle on and off.)

Also, check the microphone that’s listed in Dictation, switch it to the internal microphone. Manually select dictation microphone on Mac

But, as you may know, Dictation certainly isn’t the only app or system setting that uses a microphone. Depending on your specific setup, the culprit of your lower-quality audio connection could be something entirely different.

That’s why we recommend weeding through the apps that use your microphone

You may be able to find some of these apps in System Preferences > Security & Privacy. Just select which apps have permission to use your microphone.

Bluetooth speaker sound issues on MacBook
You may also want to go into the Security & Privacy menu to see what apps have access to your microphone.

In other cases, you may need to do a bit more digging. Just try to find anything that allows you to speak or dictate. The specific “problem app” in question may surprise.

Consider using Toothfairy

macOS Bluetooth - Toothfairy
If you’re tired of navigating through menus, Toothfairy may be a good option. You can set it to disable lower-quality codecs by default.

We’ve previously written about Toothfairy, a simple app created by developer Michael Tsai that’s pretty much a must-have if you use AirPods with your Mac.

As we’ve covered in the past, Toothfairy makes it much easier to switch between various Apple devices with a single pair of AirPods (or other Bluetooth headphones).

But Toothfairy can also help boost your audio quality by preventing your devices from falling back to the SCO codec. You can find the option to prefer the AAC coded in the advanced settings of the app.

When it’s enabled, macOS won’t use the SCO codec — even if your Bluetooth headphones have a built-in microphone.

We recommend giving Toothfairy a spin and seeing if it fixes your issue. You can find more information about the app and download it here.

Sound issues in macOS Catalina

macOS Bluetooth - Catalina
Note that you’ll probably run into similar issues in macOS Catalina. This behavior probably isn’t a bug, so Apple has yet to “patch” or fix the problem.

It’s worth noting that you may run into the same exact problem running versions of macOS Catalina (or its beta).

Because this doesn’t appear to be a bug (or at least a serious one), Apple may not have it on its radar. In fact, switching to a lower-quality codec may be intended behavior for macOS.

All of this is to say that macOS Catalina doesn’t fix this issue. If you’re running into it on a Mac running the latest software, just try out the solutions above.

mike - apple
Mike Peterson

Mike is a freelance journalist from San Diego, California.

While he primarily covers Apple and consumer technology, he has past experience writing about public safety, local government, and education for a variety of publications.

He’s worn quite a few hats in the journalism field, including writer, editor, and news designer.

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Reader Interactions

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Show 37 Comments

  1. Bruno says

    February 16, 2023 at 1:18 AM

    Jeez, thank you for that. Mac OS seriously needs a rework. First I had to go through a ton of different settings to enable audio sharing when broadcasting my screen on discord. Then, this. It’s offputting as heck and honsetly I am seriously considering switching back to windows due to the extreme lack of user-friendliness in some really basic stuff on this stupid OS. Apple is usually so polished, it makes no sense why they make the little things so complicated on what is supposed to be a top-tier machine and OS.

    Again, thanks for this. Switching to the mac mic solved it for me!

    Reply
  2. E says

    January 13, 2023 at 12:32 AM

    This was super helpful, thank you so much!

    Reply
  3. Ray says

    May 17, 2022 at 11:19 PM

    Thanks so much!! Thought I was gonna have to invest in a pair of AirPods but your solution about input/output worked!!

    Reply
  4. Steve Stonebraker says

    April 2, 2022 at 10:57 PM

    you are my hero. switching my bluetooth headphones not to be primary for audio input fixed my macbook audio issues. after months of issues this fixed it

    Reply
  5. Amir says

    March 29, 2022 at 3:52 AM

    Thank you so much for this post. Greatly appreciated, switched all microphones to macbook pro and it solved all audio issues. I was going crazy. This post should be the top result when googling the issue.

    Reply
  6. Stuart says

    March 22, 2022 at 12:12 PM

    Thank you SOOO much! I close Zoom (which was ‘listening in’) and it instantly fixed my issue!

    Reply
  7. CG says

    January 19, 2022 at 12:26 AM

    Thank you – greatly appreciated – turning off the microphone on all apps was the solution.

    Reply
  8. Bronte says

    August 28, 2021 at 10:01 PM

    You are a saviour! I’d been on chats with apple and googling solutions since last night, that had me reseting me earbuds, reinstalling apps, connecting to every possible wifi/hotspot, moving to different locations, etc. trying to fix this and within 2 minutes of opening your article boom problem solved – it was the microphone! Thank you! I only bought my MacBook 2 days ago and was seriously regretting my decision thinking I wouldn’t be able to listen to anything through earphones.

    Reply
  9. Serdar Urhan says

    June 15, 2021 at 3:37 AM

    Security&Privacy solved my issue, i removed teamviewer from the list and volume level is doubled! Thanks..

    Reply
  10. Adam says

    May 12, 2021 at 6:51 AM

    This is 100% True! Disable Microphone on your Bluetooth EarBuds and everything works as it should! When you use a microphone MAC OS is using some crap drivers for the output sound! Apple … need to keep up with getting this fixed as they used to be on top in terms of the sounds!

    I use JLab JBuds Air. They work on everything well except MAC OS .. now I have half-solution at least!

    Reply
  11. Adam says

    March 2, 2021 at 3:08 AM

    Found this thread after having quality problems with my Bose QC35ii headphones since upgrading to Big Sur. My problem is I use the headset for work calls and listen to music in between. It’s great not to have to swap headsets. Disabling the mic is not a solution for me as I need it. Oddly I hadn’t had problems with them on Catalina for six months. Audio quality was excellent. OK, occasionally MS Teams would forget to turn off calls mode but it is obvious when this happens as I can hear the mic picking up background sounds, and restarting Teams or power cycling the headset fixed it.

    Reply
  12. Thankfulperson says

    February 24, 2021 at 4:44 PM

    HUGE THANKS ! I have stop using headphones in my mac due to this low quality problem , I thought there was something wrong with devices, until I tried 3 different

    Reply
  13. Michael B says

    February 12, 2021 at 7:25 AM

    Thanks for explaning, it makes sense. BUT, my problem is that i am losing the great quality of the headset mic and i want to use the mic in my headset. But the quality drops heavily… do you know how to workaround? To switch off the mic is not the option here 🙂

    Reply
  14. mehmet says

    January 21, 2021 at 11:18 PM

    using the internal mic on macbook pro solved my problem. thanks

    Reply
  15. Rafael Trujillo says

    December 22, 2020 at 9:17 PM

    The cracking sound it is every 5 min

    Reply
  16. Rafael says

    December 22, 2020 at 9:13 PM

    Sound in Catalina ven on Mac restore. I remove bluetooth card, I remove from USB connector and I remove the ethernet cords. I Still get it on recovery mode with only USB and HDMI connected. It may come from HDMI . I need to test it on BIOS

    Reply
  17. batuchka says

    December 22, 2020 at 8:03 PM

    thanks a lot it was so helpful

    Reply
  18. Bas says

    October 28, 2020 at 3:18 AM

    Almost wanted to buy a new headphone because of this, because I was convinced that was the problem. But found this page. Tested it with other devices on my Mac, all the same result.

    Indeed not using mic of the bluetooth device is the solution!

    The part of Toothfairy is a little bit confusing. I read this as that Toothfairy would keep the sound-quality good while using the mic of my bluetooth headphone. But Toothfairy simply just forces macOS to never use the mic of the bluetooth device and use the Mac’s built-in mic instead.

    Still very glad I found this page!

    Reply
  19. Izzy says

    September 19, 2020 at 2:00 PM

    Thank you this was driving me insane! It was the dictation settings. Switching back to internal microphone sorted it for me.

    Reply
  20. Jae Young SHIN says

    August 19, 2020 at 5:03 PM

    I forgot to mention in the previous comment, you have to uncheck it to disable the enhancer so that you can fix this weird sound quality issue!

    Reply
  21. Jae Young SHIN says

    August 19, 2020 at 5:01 PM

    I’ve just discovered one another setting that might affect the quality of the audio (especially when listening to a classical music) using Music App. I use a bluetooth speaker without a microphone. So I knew that it was not the microphone that causes the problem.

    In the Music.app, under preference – playback, there is a setting called sound enhancer. It abnormally changes the sounds quality of the sound track (in my case, classical music) so that it sounds worse than original, which sucks and is a shame. It helped me not to spend another hundreds of dollar on a new bluetooth speaker… Please, Mike, add this to your article if you see this comment! Thanks and have a nice day. Hope this helps other macbook users, too.

    Reply
  22. Peter S says

    July 22, 2020 at 8:08 AM

    Thank you so much! My Sony bluetooth headphones work perfectly now. And I now know what to look for if they ever start acting up again. Great explanation! I did everything you suggested. I don’t know which one fixed the problem, but I don’t care enough to try to find out. 🙂

    Reply
  23. Dustin says

    June 30, 2020 at 8:54 PM

    Tried everything on here and no dice…

    My MBP is connected to three monitors. It finally came to me that this problem started when I began closing the lid to my machine the other day. I opened the lid, and boom, no issues.

    Reply
  24. Luis says

    June 11, 2020 at 5:48 PM

    PERFECT. thanks for that… only 6 months of struggle 🙂
    works great!!!

    Reply
  25. Damion says

    May 19, 2020 at 12:50 PM

    Nope. Didn’t do anything. Still sounds terrible and distorted.

    Great job Apple. I have a $3,500 computer that can’t handle bluetooth headphones…

    Reply
    • Pete G. says

      June 13, 2020 at 8:10 PM

      I just had this issue with my new Beats. Go to Sound, then Input, then choose Internal Mic. Then exit out. That immediately fixed it for me.

      Reply
  26. Justin says

    May 3, 2020 at 2:09 PM

    I just switched the input sound from the headphone to Mac and it worked! Thanks a lot!

    Reply
  27. Somedude says

    April 21, 2020 at 8:29 PM

    Hey,

    Just had that issue by doing a accidental manipulation which opened the dictation menu.

    You might want to add a section about it. For me the dictation was disabled, but next to it my headset microphone was selected, even tho the integrated one was selected in the sound menu. Changing that solved it for me, but your guide helped, so thanks for that!

    Reply
  28. Elisabeth says

    April 21, 2020 at 10:11 AM

    OMG thank you so much! It really sucks when expensive stuff don’t work the way they should and you have no idea what to do about it.

    Reply
  29. Roberto Alexander Felipe Lopez says

    April 14, 2020 at 2:10 PM

    I have had this problem for months! Thank you so so much for helping me fix this! I had the internal audio set to my beats pro 3 instead of the mac. This is crazy different. I hope you guys are staying safe out there!

    Reply
  30. Justin says

    April 11, 2020 at 1:13 PM

    Thank you so much for this article!

    I’ve been trying to figure out why my headphones sounded so bad on my MacBook for a couple of days now.

    I read several articles and couldn’t figure it out until I saw yours and my problem was fixed right away!

    Thank you for making it so easy to fix, I really appreciate it!!

    I guess my MacBook was trying to use the internal microphone on my headphones as I was using them.

    Thanks again!

    Reply
  31. shivangi says

    March 8, 2020 at 3:54 AM

    Thank you! Your article was so much more helpful than that stupid article on the apple website!

    Reply
  32. Abraham says

    February 24, 2020 at 11:19 PM

    Thanks, it was a simple fix.

    Reply
  33. Lars Gottlieb says

    January 25, 2020 at 4:05 AM

    It’s demoralising that Apple haven’t fixed this; it’s been an issue for at least 7 years now. There are masses of despondent users trying and unable to get their devices to work.
    And yes, it’s a bug.
    If it wasn’t, why would the same computer running windows via Bootcamp Not have the same issues? Why would an iPhone not have the same problems? It’s demoralising.

    Reply
  34. Crapple says

    December 11, 2019 at 7:41 AM

    Awesome on a Mac Pro no internal mic exists, how ridiculous apple devs!

    Already 1 year nothing happened, loopback works sometimes but you have to pay for this stuff

    Reply
  35. Shane says

    November 15, 2019 at 8:35 AM

    Thank you! Changing the mic input was the fix for me.

    Cheers!

    Reply
  36. Kate says

    November 10, 2019 at 4:25 AM

    Thank you so much – my Beats sounded too awful to listen to any music, but I just switched the mic input and that fixed it. C’mon apple!

    Reply

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