Micro Snitch
menu bar alert whenever the mic or camera switches on
Perpetual
This is a notifier, not a control: nothing here stops an app from recording, it only tells you it did. macOS already shows an indicator for the camera, so the part you are really buying is the audio alert and the activity log with app names and timestamps. The Mac App Store copy and the direct download from obdev are separate purchases with separate licences, so pick one. The last release, 1.6.1, dates from September 2023 — the app is finished rather than abandoned, but do not expect new features.
Your Mac tells you when the camera is on: the green light, and the dot in the menu bar. It is much quieter about the microphone, and it never tells you which app is responsible. Micro Snitch fills that gap for less than the price of a coffee. Something starts recording, the menu bar icon animates, and the log records the app name and the time.
The log is the part that earns the four dollars. It is how you discover that a conferencing app holds the microphone open for twenty minutes after a call ends, or that a browser tab grabbed the mic during a page you did not expect. Reading it back a day later is more informative than any alert in the moment.
Understand what it is not. It cannot deny access — that is System Settings' job, or Little Snitch's for the network side. It is a smoke alarm, not a lock.
Buy it if you are the sort of person who wants the receipt of every recording session on your machine. If you already check the privacy indicators and trust the handful of apps with mic permission, macOS is telling you enough and this adds a second menu bar icon for nothing.
What it looks like
What it does
- Alerts the moment the microphone or camera becomes active
- Names the app that started recording
- Timestamped activity log you can read back later
- Optional menu bar animation and on-screen indicator
- Universal binary, tiny footprint, one job
Also bought outright in privacy
The facts
- Price
- $3.99
- Licence
- Buy once, own forever
- What you get
- One payment. Updates included, indefinitely.
- Details
- $3.99 once on the Mac App Store, with no in-app purchases and no subscription. Objective Development also sells it directly in euros: single licence 4.49 €, multi licence 5× 17 €. The Snitch Bundle, which pairs it with a single Little Snitch licence, is 61.25 €.
- Free trial
- Yes
- On Setapp
- No
- Minimum macOS
- macOS 10.14.6
- Developer
- Objective Development Software GmbH
- Price checked
- 2026-09-22
Check it yourself - Price band
- Under $15