William Gallagher
An apparent bug in the Zoom video conference app was reportedly seeing Mac users on macOS Monterey spotting that their microphones do not switch off.
Zoom's enormous growth during the coronavirus pandemic has previously uncovered problems that were only noticeable when the app was used at scale. Following the company's efforts, and Apple's intervention, those issues appeared to be resolved.
Now, however, The Register reports that an unknown number of users are finding their microphone stay on after a Zoom call. It is being spotted because of Apple's controversial orange dot icon that means a microphone is in use.
It appears that the orange dot is staying on after a call, meaning that the microphone remained live after a recent update to Zoom.
"The Zoom client for macOS 5.9.3, released on January 25, 2022, fixed a bug involving the failure to properly terminate the microphone use post-meeting," a Zoom spokesperson told AppleInsider. "Zoom has determined that this bug did not result in audio data being transmitted back to Zoom's platform. As always, we recommend users make sure their Zoom client is updated to the latest version."
So far there is no indication of how many users were affected.
Update 4:58 p.m. Eastern: Zoom said that it has fixed the issue in version 5.9.3 of its video calling software for macOS.
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
5 Comments
I'm not exactly won over, but I've got to give credit where credit is due... Zoom was pretty crappy in a LOT of areas before the pandemic, and downright horrifying in some - the hack way they installed their software, bypassing Gateway and effectively backdooring your system to make installation and joining meetings (arguably) easier. And their weird definition of "end-to-end" encryption that wasn't that at all. I still don't exactly trust them, because a lot of that shouldn't have happened in the first place, but they really have pulled it together in a lot of ways over the past two years, too. Perhaps their foibles fall under the adage of not ascribing to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. lol They at least seem to be trying.
This does not appear to be limited to Zoom. I get this after using the macOS built-in screen recording, although not the first time I use it. Usually it stays on after the fourth or fifth time I record the screen, but after that it will not turn off and the only solution is to reboot.
That’s a REALLY bad problem. Glad they fixed it, but begs the question of how it was there in the first place.
“Controversial orange dot?” Hardly. There’s a small subset of people who find it bothersome but pretty much everyone else appreciates it precisely for this reason.
As of August 19th, 2022, this issue still exists, using the latest version of the Zoom.us.app, version: 5.11.6 (9890).