Sound in the Mac Phone app doesn't work

[walterpaisley]

Anyone else get this working? If I try to initiate a call from the Phone app on my laptop, the call completes, but there's no sound in either direction. Doesn't matter if I use headphones or the laptop's mic/speaker.

 

[alexjohnson]

Anyone else get this working? If I try to initiate a call from the Phone app on my laptop, the call completes, but there's no sound in either direction. Doesn't matter if I use headphones or the laptop's mic/speaker.

I find it works… kind of. After a while I find it can immediately drop the line, but that happened with FaceTime for calls as well.

The thing I am noticing is that voicemails are silent, although the transcription works well so real world it doesn't matter.

 

[kkclstuff]

YES! alot wrong with PHONE.app

Mine keeps dropping mid call with (paraphrased here) "Your phone must be on the same wifi". IM at home everything is updated, same acct, same wifi, etc etc etc. I can only move to my iPhone and switch the call over from there. Otherwise it doesnt connect, or drops mid call.


here's a preliminary list of DEV issues;

• No way to ‘favorite’ a recent contact… must dive into contacts?? There's only "Delete" when you right click an item—why no Favorite tag option?
• NO 'remove recents' must select all individually, then delete. (wasted energy: updates should streamline the workflow/content, not make us dance the keyboard and trackpad)
• Why separate the FaceTime and Phone apps? in the beginning of continuity (circa 2012) FaceTime WAS the Phone app, you could dial etc. Now they are separated them like the ‘BS’ they did with iTunes/podcasts. Theres too much redundancy with FT/Phone, just consolidate them—let us make calls from FT
• Why is there a "video menu" in Phone? All this does is jump over to the FT app?? Just put the “phone” functionality into the FT app (or vis versa).
• No way to move the column divider in apps (ie Phone/Facetime/Messages/Contacts/etc). It's huge waste of screen real estate! Why can't we resize the window columns? —FaceTime has had this issue on iPhone for a long time; When you want to take a 'FaceTime Photo' your own camera view enlarges and blocks the image your trying to catch. WHY?!? ...now  is bringing that plague to the desktops!?

Sorry for the rant, there ALOT more across the 'upgrade' that Im too frustrated to go into. I always believed (40yrs) the ppl at  were smart and developed the best for the OS experience. I can't say that anymore. Each 'upgrade' is become less logical and less Mac-like.

'Think different' wasnt meant to be spiteful.

 

[Kylo83]

it isnt even news they make you now you can answer phone calls, you could do it on older macOS's you can eve see contacts on phone app, like everything this year its a mess, now we have contact app, phone app and FaceTime app. Why

 

[kkclstuff]

I still hold to my rant about "the design", along with the endless pruning of features/functions in the macOS only to "re-release" them at a later date with Ooo's and Ahh's.

But I have found a solution to my non-connect Phone issues:

I use VPNon all my devices and found if I turned off the Mac's VPN it worked—even if the other devices (iPhone) still had their VPN active. The solution was to delete all my VPN configurations on my Mac, delete my VPN app (SurfShark), reinstall VPN app.

so far Phone app is working as expected. Hope that can help otehrs. <—Now can someone help me with macOS 26 'Auto-correct' and spell-check not working 🤣

 

[kkclstuff]

Anyone else get this working? If I try to initiate a call from the Phone app on my laptop, the call completes, but there's no sound in either direction. Doesn't matter if I use headphones or the laptop's mic/speaker.

hi these might help if you're still looking

• follow the doc on Phone setup
• you can switch mic and speaker options in the Phone.app *Video* menu—select your options

 

[kkclstuff]

also found that calls 'dropped on Mac' (or pushed back onto iPhone) while using my VPN's 'bypass'/tunneling option was active.

Phone.app works from me on macOS26.0.1 with VPN ON or OFF, but not in bypass/tunneling/split mode (where VPN is running but Phone app is bypassed)

 

[bunce66]

The app doesnt work for me at all. The other person can't hear me, but I can hear them. I've lost a lot of calls becasue of that. Very buggy.

 

[kkclstuff]

It sucks that Apple has dropped the ball so hard with macOS 26
things that helped me...

• check the mic I/O settings under Phone/app "Video" menu
• turn off any vpn or vpn bypass/'tunneling'

Note: when my calls dropped using the Mac, they were still active on my iPhone. so you can still 'pickup the call' on the iPhone and switch audio to 'speaker' (or iPhone).