Globally Disable Microphone in Big Sur?
This drove me bananas. Should be straightforward, but it isn't.
Googling returned lots of results for disabling the microphone on an application-specific basis in Big Sur, but absolutely oogatz on a global toggle to kill the microphone on a GLOBAL basis to both stop Speech Recognition from chewing up my CPU as well as shut down an open mic.
I next visited &quot;System Preferences&quot; &gt; &quot;Sound&quot; which seemed a logical place to tweak such a toggle. Nope.
It's actually buried in &quot;System Preferences&quot; &gt; &quot;Accessibility&quot;. No, I'm not joking; that's where it lives. Untick &quot;Enable Voice Control&quot; and if you go back to Activity Monitor, you'll see you get your CPU back and the microphone should be down.

Another thing that really irks me is that Apple is supposed to telling you when something is accessing the microphone or camera, but you don't get a warning when Apple itself is triggering the microphone. ANYTHING that accesses the microphone or camera SHOULD trigger a warning light IMHO.