MDM deployment to Catalina with standard users [SOLVED]

[BecciSimmons]

We use a Mobile Device Management system (JAMF) to deploy Audacity to our students and staff, both of whom have standard (non-admin) accounts. All of their machines are running Catalina.

With the way Catalina implements security Audacity now has to ask permission from each user to access the microphone. Camera and Microphone access can't be pushed with profiles any more, it needs to be allowed specifically by the logged in user. With other apps that need microphone access (zoom, google meet, loom, adobe audition) the user is prompted on first opening the app and despite not being an admin they can put a checkmark in the box in System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Microphone to allow access.

Audacity doesn't prompt for microphone permission, nor can it be manually added to the permissions pane. To make it work I would have to log into an admin account on each student and teacher machine to enable the microphone. This isn't a viable workflow.

Is there a plan to enable the microphone prompting in a standard account with a future release of audacity? maybe v3? or is it time to say goodbye to this beloved (by staff) tool?

[kozikowski]

Any chance of pushing the machines back to an earlier version than Catalina?

It's possible to make machines so safe they stop working.

Koz

[steve]

Which version of Audacity are you trying to use?

[BecciSimmons]

Sorry Steve, I know I should have said, specs are:

Audacity 2.4.2
Catalina 10.15.6

and kozikowski, no chance to push machine os backwards, more than ever we are dependent on video conferencing software that needs 10.15.6

Becci

[kozikowski]

video conferencing software that needs 10.15.6

First I've heard of this. Specifically which software?

to deploy Audacity to our students and staff,

We never got to the why part, so we don't have a job yet. Why are we doing this?

It's extraordinarily difficult to get any program to record both sides of a conference, comm, or chat.

Koz

[BecciSimmons]

Hi Koz,
The audacity issue is not linked to the videoconferencing functionality, I mentioned it as an example. We don't use audacity with the videoconferencing. I'd rather not go off on a tangent. My question is whether Audacity is addressing the issue of microphone access under the Catalina operating system.
Becci

[steve]

Audacity doesn't prompt for microphone permission

I could be wrong, but I thought that the release version of Audacity 2.4.2 did prompt for microphone permission
Audacity is listed in microphone permissions on my Mac.
(macOS is not my usual OS)

[BecciSimmons]

Hallelujah!
Thanks, Steve, you're right, the latest version of 2.4.2 does ask for microphone permissions properly and a standard user can grant those permissions.