There are many reasons you might want to connect a USB microphone to your Chromebook, maybe you want to sound good in your video calls, record a podcast, produce music, or do really anything else that would require good audio.
But regardless of what you want to do with your USB microphone, if you want to connect one to your Chromebook, this is the article for you. Because today, I’m going to explain everything you need to know about using a USB microphone with a Chromebook.
Prefer to watch a video about how to connect a USB microphone to a Chromebook? Click here.
What Microphones Are Compatible With Chrome OS
Before you start connecting your microphone to your Chromebook, you’ll need to make sure you choose a microphone that’s compatible with Chrome OS. Most of them will work perfectly with your Chromebook, but unfortunately, some might not work at all.
The big thing you need to check is to make sure that it doesn’t require any additional software or drivers as you won’t be able to install the software on Chrome OS. As long as you pick one that says something like “no additional software is needed” like this one on Amazon, it should work just fine.
How To Connect A USB Microphone To Your Chromebook
Once you’ve got your compatible USB microphone all ready to go, you’ll need to plug it into a USB port on your Chromebook. Hopefully, your Chromebook has at least one USB A port that you can plug it into. But some Chromebooks (like the Google Pixelbook Go) don’t have any traditional USB ports.
If this is the case for your Chromebook, you’ll still be able to use a USB microphone, but you’ll need to get a USB C to USB A adapter like this one on Amazon in order to plug it in.
Once it’s plugged in, you’ll want to go into the audio settings to make sure it’s set up correctly. To do that, click on the time in the bottom right-hand corner.
Then, click on the arrow next to the volume slider.
Then (assuming your microphone is compatible with Chrome OS and plugged in correctly) you will see your microphone listed under the “Input” section.
Assuming it’s there, you’ll need to make sure there’s a tick symbol next to the microphone that looks something like this:
This means all your apps will use the USB microphone instead of your Chromebook’s internal mic. If this is the case, you’re all good to go.
But if your internal mic is selected like this:
Any app that requires a microphone will use your Chromebook’s built in microphone and not the USB microphone. Don’t worry, all you have to do if this happens is click on the USB microphone to select it instead.
How To Adjust The Mic Volume On Your Chromebook
Once you’ve got your microphone all set up and ready to go, you might find that you need to adjust the volume.
The default volume setting should be fine most of the time, but if you test it out doing whatever you want to do with it and you find that it’s either too loud or too quiet for your needs, you can adjust the input volume quite easily by clicking on the time in the bottom right-hand corner again.
Then clicking on the arrow next to the volume slider.
And then under the name of your microphone, you will see a slider that allows you to adjust the input volume up or down to suit your needs.
It might take a few goes of moving the slider, and then going back to the app you’re using with it to test it again. But then once you’ve got it set to the perfect level, you will be all good to go.
