Troubleshooting: No sound in Safari on MacOS Catalina

If you use the Safari web browser on MacOS Catalina, you’ll likely have problems with audio playback. Upon trying to play, you’ll see the error “Apologies...We couldn't play the audio.”

This applies to synthetic playback and MP3 recordings. Videos continue to play fine.

Unfortunately this is due to a bug Apple introduced in a recent version of Safari (in late 2021), and no workaround is available on our end. If this bug affects you, our advice is to do one of the following:

• Use another web browser (Firefox or Chrome).
• Upgrade your MacOS to a newer (post-Catalina) version.
• Wait for Apple to fix the bug. They are notoriously tight-lipped about their future plans, so we have no idea when they’ll do this.

For technical details about this Safari bug, see this GitHub thread.