Fix: Audacity macOS 10.15 Catalina Recording

At the time of this article, Audacity is not supported under 10.15 macOS Catalina. This includes Audacity recording playback from devices, such as Griffin’s iMic. However, there is a workaround to get recording playback working again in Audacity for macOS 10.15.

Ensure Audacity is in your Applications folder and is quit.

Open Terminal and type the following command. This will launch Audacity.

open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

Audacity catalina macos 10.15 fix recording command

Select your recording mic device from the dropdown and click record. You will be prompted to allow access to microphone – click OK.

Audacity allow microphone access 10.15 macos catalina

Audacity will now have access to your recording device and will record sound. For this workaround, you must keep Terminal launched with Audacity in order for Audacity to record correctly. If you close Audacity, you will need to re-launch Audacity from Terminal as you did in step 2.