Description of the issue:
I’m running MacOS Ventura 13.4.1 (c) on an M1. I’m running Brave 1.56.14. In “System Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone”, I have Brave Browser turned off so that it doesn’t have access to my microphone. (I’ve done the same for Camera, as well.)
Even with my settings this way, though, every once in a while, I’ll notice an orange dot on the Control Center icon in the top right. When I click to open Control Center, at the top of the Control Center, it tells me that Brave recently used my microphone. How is this possible if I have denied it access to my microphone, as stated above? This is concerning. Is this a MacOS issue, or a Brave issue?
Thanks!
How can this issue be reproduced?
I don’t have a way to reproduce. When I have noticed the issue, though, it’s been when I’m logged into Twitter and viewing that tab in the browser.
Expected result:
I should never see a notification in the Control Center telling me that Brave has recently accessed my microphone.
@bleedingcash what you’re seeing is where Brave is checking if you have a microphone connected. It would be part of the process where it checks if one is connected and if there is any permission for it to be used, at which point it would ask you for permission if it needed to be used on your content.
Many security programs will trigger notification alerts just because programs are checking like that. Again, phrased a bit differently, websites are programmed to access different types of content. So if one of them has something like a voice to text option, it will ping to Brave and Brave (according to your settings) might check if it has access to the microphone. Your OS or security program would see this check as an attempt to use your microphone and would alert you as it is.
I’m honestly not sure if this will reduce or eliminate your message, but have you changed settings in Brave at all? If not, give it a try and provide feedback if it changes.
If you go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Site & Shields Settings → Microphone, is yours set to Sites can ask to use your microphone?
By default it will be as you see in the screenshots above. But if you don’t want it accessing microphone, you’ll want to say Don't allow sites to use your microphone.
Thanks for your reply! That makes sense as to what Brave is doing…checking to see if it can use the microphone.
In regards to the Brave settings itself. My settings do look like you’ve shown. I don’t want to change it to “Don’t allow sites…”, though, because I do want to allow some sites to be able to use the microphone at times. Below these settings, though, I do see a “Customized behaviors” section where it looks like I can explicitly allow/deny microphone access by site, but I can’t figure out how to add sites to these sections. Do you know how I can do this?
