Big Sur upgrade FaceTime no audio on MBP

Classic in OSX for the past 15 years... Most usually a simple reset of CoreAudio will do the job.

The simplest way (even if a bit weird for the non technical person) remains easy. Just copy and paste the following commands in the Terminal App (Found in Applications > Utilities > Terminal App).

Without going too much in details, open the Terminal app, copy the first command, enter your password, wait for the command to complete and then enter the second command. Your password should be "remembered" for the second one...

This first command will kill the audio system

sudo killall coreaudiod

This second command will restart the audio system

sudo launchctl start com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

Worst case, after just restart your Mac and check the apps in question.

Cheers.

I seem to be having the same problem. Today I discovered that when I start an audio phone call from my iMac (using my iPhone) there is no audio, but the audio histogram in the phone notification pane indicates that audio is being received. When I checked my audio settings the correct input (Internal Microphone) and output (Headphones) were selected. I discovered that by switching the audio output to any other destination, and then switching it back to Headphones the audio came back and worked normally for the duration of the call. I've been able to replicate the behaviour several times.

Unfortunately the issue still exists after upgrading to macOS 11.1

@Glenn Samson

The behavior is the same at my iMac late 2014. No audio in FaceTime but when i switch to my AirPods and then back to my iMac the audio works for the duration of the call.

I have same/similar problem. After upgrading to Big Sur on my iMac I can no longer make calls from my computer via my iPhone as I could prior to upgrade. My computer microphone is registering background sound but call is not ringing or connecting even though it registers a missed call on recipients phone.

Also I can no longer preview saved video's in my photo albums since upgrading.

I received another upgrade today which I hoped would solve this problem, but it did not.

I had a call with support. They observed the issue and gathered the necessary information and data for development. I have an update call on thursday, but hopefully this will at least get the FaceTime audio issue resolved.

I had the same issue with my Mac book pro when I updated it to the Big Sur. I cant hear any audio until I disconnect and connect my headphones again. Its the same issue with my friend on their iMac and MacBook Pro. Please fix this quickly!!

I faced the same issue with my MBP

For some reason FaceTime doesn't work well with the headphones, but if I do the same what listed above it starts to work well - it is very anoying

Before updating to Big Sur FaceTime worked well and there was no such problem with cheating of configuration

A short update... I tried again, and to my surprise, audio now works as expected in FaceTime. No updates to either Big Sur or FaceTime have been applied but...

Since installing Big Sur I have been experiencing a plethora of issues. During troubleshooting I cleared all caches (more than once - thanks Onyx) found and deleted old 32bit kexts, etc (thanks EtreCheck) and deleted may old and unused applications. Many, but not all, of my original problems with Big Sur have either been resolved or greatly improved after the purge.

It would be good to know if this process helps others with the FaceTime audio issue.

I have the same problem with my iMac 27" 5K late 2014 on Big Sur 11.0.1

Its seems like a log of us have this issue. Is there a fix for this?

Thank you very much for your answer, this fixed the FaceTime audio problem on my iMac!

Unfortunately, this did not solve my issue. I am running BigSur on an M1 Mac Mini which may required a different solution.

I have constant call failures on big sur on my M1 MBA as well. very annoying.