Guess Who’s Talking (game) vs. macOS Sonoma: The Microphone That Wouldn’t Work
I installed Guess Who’s Talking (game) from OrchardKit on a MacBook Pro M1 running macOS Sonoma 14.3. The idea was simple: fire it up, test the voice recognition mode, maybe see how well it handles background noise. It’s one of those audio-driven titles where the whole mechanic depends on your mic behaving.
Spoiler: mine didn’t.
The game launched fine. No Gatekeeper drama this time. Menu loaded, audio output worked, music played. But the second I hit the voice challenge mode, it just sat there. No input detected. The little mic indicator in the corner stayed gray. No crash, no error, just silence.
And that’s worse than a crash, honestly.
First instinct: blame the hardware
My first thought was classic: maybe macOS switched the input device. I checked System Settings → Sound → Input. The correct mic was selected. Levels moved when I spoke. So the hardware was fine.
Then I assumed the game itself was buggy. Relaunched it. Same result. Rebooted the Mac (because sometimes that magically fixes sandbox weirdness). Still nothing.
At this point I opened Activity Monitor just to see if the process was spiking or throwing obvious errors. CPU was low. Memory stable. The title was just… not hearing me.
That’s when it hit me: Privacy permissions.
Apple’s mic and camera controls are strict now, especially post-Catalina and tightened again in Ventura/Sonoma. Apps don’t just “use” your microphone anymore. They have to explicitly request access, and macOS enforces it at the system level. Apple documents the behavior here: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-access-to-your-microphone-mchla1b1e1fe/mac
So I went to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.
The game wasn’t listed.
That was the clue.
What was actually happening
If an app doesn’t trigger the permission prompt correctly — or if it was blocked before — macOS sometimes never shows the “Allow access to microphone?” dialog. No prompt means no access. No access means silent input.
I quit the game completely. Not just closed the window — full Cmd+Q.
Then I reset its privacy permissions manually using Terminal:
tccutil reset Microphone
This clears the Transparency, Consent, and Control database entry for microphone permissions.
Launched the game again.
This time, macOS finally asked: “Guess Who’s Talking would like to access the microphone.”
Clicked Allow.
And just like that, the input meter lit up. The recognition mode started responding instantly.
No reinstall needed. No weird patches. Just macOS being protective.
A quick detour I didn’t need
Before figuring this out, I actually re-downloaded the build from the resource I used for macOS testing here: https://deadtriggermod.xyz/audio/29004-guess-who-s-talking.html
I thought maybe the package had missing entitlements. But it wasn’t the binary. It was the system’s permission state.
For reference, if a developer wants proper mic handling, Apple’s entitlement documentation lives here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com_apple_security_device_audio_input
If the entitlement isn’t declared correctly, macOS won’t even allow the permission dialog to show. In this case, the entitlement was fine — it just hadn’t been triggered cleanly.
Why it happened
Here’s what I suspect.
On first launch, the game initialized its audio engine before the permission request properly fired. macOS blocked it silently. From that point on, the system considered it denied without displaying a visible toggle under Microphone settings.
That’s rare, but I’ve seen it happen with smaller indie releases or custom audio frameworks.
And since the title isn’t currently listed on the Mac App Store — I checked the official search here: https://apps.apple.com/us/search?term=Guess%20Who%27s%20Talking
— it doesn’t benefit from App Store’s extra sandbox validation layers.
You can also check OrchardKit’s main site for updates or patches if they mention audio fixes: https://orchardkit.com/
But in my case, the build itself was fine.
What actually fixed it
Three steps:
- Quit the app completely.
- Run
tccutil reset Microphone. - Relaunch and approve the permission dialog.
After that, everything worked exactly as intended. Voice detection responded fast. No latency spikes. CPU usage stayed around 6–8% on the M1 during recognition. Even tested it with a bit of background fan noise — still accurate.
If I had to do it again
I’d skip the reboot and the re-download.
The moment a mic-based app doesn’t respond on macOS, I now check:
- Is it listed under Privacy → Microphone?
- If not, reset TCC.
- Relaunch clean.
That’s it.
Sonoma’s privacy model is solid, but it’s unforgiving when permission state gets weird. The system doesn’t always explain what’s wrong. It just quietly enforces policy.
In this case, nothing was “broken.” The game wasn’t defective. macOS was just doing exactly what it’s designed to do: block audio input until explicit consent exists in the TCC database.
Now it runs perfectly. And next time an audio-driven tool pretends I’m mute, I won’t waste 40 minutes chasing ghosts.