Voice Memos not recording

Settings>Sound>Sound Effects

Be sure these are checked:

Check: Play User Interface Sound Effects

Check: Play Feedback When Volume Changed

Apple why you have these support forums if you don't do anything? I have also reported this issue through Feedback Assistant with no reaction. Please everyone in this topic use Feedback Assistant to report this issue, maybe someone will do something about it in next 10 years.

I have a slight update, the issue momentarily resolved itself and i could use voice memos for about a week. Now it’s back to not working. No perceptible correlation to any other change in how I use my machine. This is definitely a major problem and quicktime’s record audio functionality just isn’t as good.

Our best bet is to buy a Ouija Board and contact Steve Jobs. Standards have slipped since his demise.

If this post gets removed then at least we’ll know that this thread is being monitored and it will confirm that Apple would rather expend effort massively marking up the price of cables and connectors in its stores than sorting out basic software glitches!

Hopefully you all are still monitoring this thread. Reading about this topic elsewhere, it was mentioned to try enabling 'Play user interface sound effects' in System Preferences -> Sound -> Sound Effects.

This is a checkbox towards the bottom of this menu.

I can only guess why the memo record functionality would be tied to this checkbox being enabled, but hopefully this helps you all out as well as a workaround until Apple can fix this properly.

Best of luck!

davidSF06.

Great stuff. This works! Quite why this isn't selected by default puzzles me and why it renders a core application useless with it de-selected is beyond me. Regardless, your post was helpful and I appreciate the effort you made to post. Thank you :)

To boxfordapple: can you confirm your configuration? Voice Memos on Catalina works for me on my MacBook Air, using either the internal microphone or an external USB microphone. But it DOES NOT work with the same external microphone on my Mac Mini. But that external microphone works correctly for voice dictation and for Zoom on the Mini.

10.15.2 and Apple haven't fixed this. It seems they bother zero. No reply to my report on Feedback Assistant either.

MacOS 10.15.3 also fails to address the issue. Come on, Apple. Could it be iCloud related?

I'm having the same problem.

Come on Apple... how many posts are you waiting for until you acknowledge a problem? Just let us know that you're aware of it and working on it.

Same issue. Voice Memos was working great until I upgraded from Mojave to Catalina.

I also have the same issue described in this post.

I have the exact same issue and it's frustrating. I've taken to use a third-party app -- which is pathetic. Please help, Apple!

You're a Genius!