Chosen Solution
Hi - a few days ago my wife’s phone’s mic stopped working. No amount of rebooting or factory resetting would fix it. I did some searching and found an official Google response at this page. Apparently it’s not an uncommon problem with these phones and it’s hardware failure. After consulting with Google it was recommended we take the phone to uBreakiFix. They replaced the ports/mic at the bottom of the phone (I’m guessing that’s the daughterboard?) and that didn’t fix the issue. My question is: can I fix the problem by replacing the motherboard? Is there anything else I can do?
I believe to have found the answer for you friend. Please read this Fixing the microphone issue One test to know for sure if your MIC is not working is to do an audio recording test or phone call. Speaker will work normally, however when you turn off speaker mode and go private(?) it will no longer work. This should happen when you perform a recording as well. Hopefully the above post assists. If you feel like you’re not up to the challenge take it to a tech. Cheers
This happened to me (microphone didn’t work, speaker phone and video recording did) in May 2018 after an upgrade to Android 8.1.0. Google Support had me place the phone in safe mode (hold power button down until ‘safe mode’ option appears) which disables 3rd party apps. Once in safe mode the microphone started working again which indicated the problem was in an app/OS conflict. Technician recommended I delete apps one or two at a time and test after each one to see which caused the problem but I was on travel with no good way to test so I deleted a large swatch of apps at once (primarily store/weather/beach) and then tried. Problem has disappeared. I’ll reinstall apps as needed until problem occurs again.
Hi all, my wife’s Pixel (formerly my Pixel) starting having this issue shortly after the Oreo upgrade which became progressively worse over time. Her microphone was NOT broken and neither was any of the other hardware in her phone. This was purely a software issue and I can tell you what fixed it for us … Android P. I enrolled her phone in the Beta Program so I could go ahead and upgrade her to P. After a week, she has only had 1 problem with her mic that could have been an unrelated issue. We’ve had some bugs, but that’s to be expected with a beta version. Under normal circumstances you should never enroll your primary phone in the Beta Program, but her phone had become unusable and we had nothing to lose. I will update if we run into trouble going forward, but so far so good. I would highly recommend enrolling in the beta and going up to Android P.
I noticed that in Safe mode I can use my mic, so I deleted the newest apps, and one of those was the problem!
What you want to do, is disable all apps that are using the microphone, in order to make this happen, you’d have to go to settings, then you click Privacy, that’s where you’ll find Permissions Manager, click on Permissions Manager. This will take you to the next step, You’ll want to scroll down now, and find Microphone. After you click Microphone, it will show you which apps, are using, or have commandeered, your microphone, preventing you from using it. Go down the list and disable everything. After that restart your phone. You’ll find the problem is gone. I had discovered this problem when I couldn’t use my OK GOOGLE ASSISTANT APP. Problem solved by my brilliant mind. Try it. You won’t know what app it was, after disabling one app at a time, because you’d have to Restart afterwards by each one. To restart your phone, you want to press the power button. Then it will say, power down, or shut down. Or restart, and safe mode click restart for the final step. Afterwards you’ll find the problem is gone. So anyways that’s the solution. I know this will help as it worked out for me. Hopefully I have composed this, in a way that you can clearly understand, what I intended, for you to take away from it’s crazy, composed message. Go at it now. Take care, and God Bless You.
There is also a bug with the Pixel 1 and updating to Oreo. No amount of reboots or factory resets will fix it. Although, sometimes the mic will work for a little bit after a reboot. There are no fixes yet, but I’d make sure it’s not a software issue before you tear it apart or pay for a replacement.
I’m keen to know the fix for this, the same thing has happened to my wife’s Pixel.
Hi, I went to the Ibreakufix store to diagnose, they replaced my motherboard in a few days for free of charge. My mic, phone speaker and aux were not working stable, had to reboot phone =( My phone was out of warranty as well, hope it helps.
Hi, My microphone stopped working and some weird loading type screen requiring a hard reset was going on. It turned out to be the OfferUp app. I uninstalled and installed an earlier version, problem solved! I hope this helps someone…
I faced same issue since last 15 days. My mic will be suddenly mute. It will be ok after 2-3 reboots. Again it will not work after some time. I think it is software issue but when I revert to Android 7.1 , the problem is not solved. I upgraded to Android 9 p . I don’t have the mic issue again. I strongly believe the issue is due to the android 8.1.
I had this same issue, and for me it was the Fit Notifications app I had installed for showing notifications on my Fitbit Alta. Uninstalling it and restarting the phone did the trick. Hope this helps someone!
https://lifehacker.com/everything-you-ne… For all the people who have trouble with pixel microphone issue, please register yourself as a Class Member using the link above
My mic seems to only not work on speaker phone. I can do voice-to-text. I can talk on the phone. I can be heard in video recordings. Any suggestions for such a limited issue?
It’s so frustrating to constantly be told, “what? I can’t hear you. Hello? “ with every single phone call I make or receive. Or I can use speakerphone and have all my coworkers hear. Sweet. This is disappointing, because even refurbished, it isn’t like this phone was cheap.
My Pixel has had the issue as well, in fact it was so bad I couldn’t even get it to work rebooting via safe mode (as someone suggested). Had to let the power drain completely before it came back. Tried something else today. Blocked Google Play Services from accessing the mic, so far so good. It’s been working all day and I haven’t had it work that long since I first bought it.
I too have the same problem….. My mic doesn’t even work…even after so many reboot and deleting of apps the mic still doesn’t work…sometimes, after shutting down, my speaker doesn’t work…I have google pixel 1. Please, please help me…
