How to play music through your mic on a Mac

Why the call can’t hear your music

Zoom, Discord and Meet each listen to one input device: your microphone. Music playing on your Mac goes to your speakers or headphones, not to that input, so the call never hears it. Holding your phone up to the mic works, badly.

macOS has no setting that adds an app’s sound to your microphone. To mix the two, you need either the call app’s own screen-sharing sound, or a virtual microphone: an audio device that apps see as a mic, fed by software that mixes your real mic with the music.

Option 1: share sound with your screen

Most call apps can send your Mac’s sound as part of a share.

• Zoom: click Share Screen and tick “Share Sound”. To send sound without your screen, choose Advanced, then Computer Audio.
• Google Meet: present a Chrome tab with “Also share tab audio” on. With Chrome 142 or later on macOS 14.2 or later, presenting a window or your entire screen can include “Also share system audio”.
• Microsoft Teams: turn on “Include sound” when you share. On a Mac, Teams asks you to install its audio driver first.
• Discord: screen share can include an app’s sound on macOS 13 or later. People in the voice channel hear it only while they watch your stream.

That covers a one-off video in a meeting. The sound only travels with a share, only in that app, and it isn’t part of your microphone, so it can’t reach a Discord voice channel without a screen share, a podcast recording, or an app with no share-sound option.

Option 2: a virtual microphone

A virtual microphone takes your real mic and the apps you choose, mixes them, and hands the call app a single input. The call hears your voice and the music together, whether or not you share your screen.

Patch is the one we make. It mixes your microphone and up to four apps into a virtual mic called Patch Mix, with a level for each and a limiter on the way out.

1. Install Patch. Download Patch and follow its setup. It installs a small audio component that adds Patch Mix, a virtual microphone. Your Mac’s sound pauses for about a second while it installs.
2. Add your microphone and the music app. Add your microphone as a source, then add the app that plays the music: Music, Spotify, a browser or any other Mac app. Patch asks for permission to capture app audio the first time.
3. Send both to the call. Turn on Send for your microphone and for the music. Set the music well under your voice with its fader, and watch the meters.
4. Choose Patch Mix in your call app. In Zoom, Discord, Google Meet or OBS, choose Patch Mix as the microphone. Patch shows when the app starts listening.
5. Preview, then go live. Preview lets you hear the whole mix in your headphones while the call hears silence. When it sounds right, click Go live.

The same setup covers “mix my mic and system audio” jobs: a podcast intro, a game on a stream, or an app demo with its sound. Other tools can do it too; see how Mac audio routers compare.

Send just one browser tab

Adding a browser to Patch sends all its tabs. When the sound you want is one YouTube video or one web player, Patch for Chrome, the free browser add-on that works in Chrome, Edge and Arc, sends just that tab into the mix. It shows in Patch as a Chrome tab card you can rename, with its own fader like any other source.

1. In Patch, choose Add a Chrome tab, then add Patch for Chrome from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Pin it: click the puzzle piece in the toolbar, then the pin.
3. On the tab you want, click Patch in the toolbar, then Send this tab.
4. Click Go live in Patch. The call hears the tab mixed with your voice.

The music can even play in the same browser as your call: Patch for Chrome refuses the meeting’s own tab, so the call never hears itself. See share tab audio in any call.

Pick the mic in your call app

Choose Patch Mix once in each app. Always choose your headphones as the speaker, never Patch Pass-Thru, or the call hears itself.

Play music through your mic in games and Discord

Patch Mix works anywhere you can pick a microphone, not just in calls. To send a game’s own sound too, add the game as a source in Patch, like any other app.

• Discord: in the desktop app, open User Settings, then Voice & Video, and choose Patch Mix as your Input Device. Everyone in the voice channel hears the music with your voice, with no stream. See play music on Discord for the voice settings that keep music intact.
• Games with voice chat: if the game’s audio or voice settings let you choose a microphone or input device, choose Patch Mix there.
• Games and apps with no microphone setting: they use your Mac’s input. Open System Settings › Sound, choose Input, and select Patch Mix. Set it back to your microphone when you’re done, or every app that uses the Mac’s input hears the mix.

People often ask about games such as Roblox or VRChat. The same rule applies to any game on your Mac: choose Patch Mix where the game lets you pick a microphone, or as your Mac’s input if it doesn’t. Keep headphones on, so your real mic doesn’t pick the music up a second time.

Stop the call app filtering music

Call apps clean up your voice with noise suppression, echo cancellation and automatic gain. All three are built for speech, and they treat music as noise to remove. If your music cuts in and out, pumps or sounds underwater, turn them off or down, as in the app notes above, and keep headphones on so your mic doesn’t pick the music up a second time.

On Windows?

This guide is for Mac. On Windows, people usually play music through their mic with VB-Audio’s Voicemeeter, a virtual mixer, or VB-CABLE, a virtual cable. Voicemeeter doesn’t run on macOS; if you’ve moved to a Mac, see what to use instead of Voicemeeter on a Mac.

Questions