How to Share System Audio on Zoom on a Mac

You’re on a Zoom call. You want to play a song, a video clip, or a sound effect so everyone on the call can hear it. You hit play, and… nothing. Your participants hear silence. Or worse, they hear a faint, tinny version of the audio picked up by your laptop microphone.

This is one of the most common frustrations for Mac users on Zoom. Sharing your system audio should be simple, but macOS makes it surprisingly difficult. Here’s why, and what you can do about it.

Why Is This So Hard on Mac?

On Windows, there’s a built-in option called “Stereo Mix” that lets apps capture whatever audio your computer is playing. macOS has no equivalent.

The core issue is that macOS keeps audio outputs (your speakers or headphones) completely separate from audio inputs (your microphone). Zoom can only listen to microphone inputs. It has no way to directly tap into the audio coming out of your speakers.

So when you play a YouTube video or a Spotify track, that audio goes straight to your speakers and nowhere else. Zoom never sees it. This is actually a privacy feature of macOS, but it makes sharing audio in meetings a real headache.

Method 1: Zoom’s Built-In “Share Sound” Option

Zoom does have a feature for sharing audio, but it comes with some strings attached.

When you share your screen in Zoom, there’s a checkbox at the bottom of the screen-sharing dialog that says “Share sound.” Checking this box will route your system audio to the meeting participants.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Click the Share Screen button in the Zoom toolbar.
2. Select the screen or window you want to share.
3. At the bottom-left of the sharing dialog, check the box that says Share sound.
4. Click Share.

This works, but there are some real drawbacks:

• You have to share your screen. If you just want people to hear audio without seeing your screen, this is awkward. Everyone on the call can see whatever is on your display, which might include notifications, messages, or other things you’d rather keep private.
• Audio quality can be inconsistent. Zoom’s screen-sharing audio capture on Mac sometimes introduces compression artifacts or slight delays.
• It only works while screen sharing is active. The moment you stop sharing your screen, the audio stops too. There’s no way to just share audio on its own.
• Window-specific sharing can be unreliable. If you share a specific window (like a browser tab playing a video), the audio routing doesn’t always work as expected. Full-screen sharing tends to be more reliable, but then you’re exposing your entire desktop.

For quick, one-off situations, the screen-sharing method is fine. But if you regularly need to share audio in meetings, or if you need to share audio without sharing your screen, you’ll want something better.

Method 2: Use a Virtual Audio Cable

The more reliable solution is to create a virtual audio device on your Mac that acts as a bridge between your system audio and Zoom’s microphone input. This type of tool is sometimes called a “virtual audio cable” or “audio loopback device.”

The idea is simple: the virtual device captures everything your Mac is playing and presents it as a microphone input. When you select that virtual microphone in Zoom, your meeting participants hear your system audio as if it were coming from a mic.

Soundshine is a macOS menu bar app that does exactly this. It installs a lightweight audio driver that creates a virtual microphone from your system audio. You toggle it on, select “Soundshine Microphone” in Zoom, and your participants hear whatever your Mac is playing. Music, video, app sounds, all of it.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Install Soundshine. A guided setup wizard walks you through installing the audio driver. Takes about 30 seconds.
2. Click the Soundshine icon in your menu bar and turn on audio routing.
3. Open Zoom. Go to Settings > Audio and change your microphone to Soundshine Microphone.
4. Play whatever audio you want to share. Your meeting participants will hear it.

A few things about this approach:

• You don’t need to share your screen. The audio routing works through the microphone input, so it’s completely independent of screen sharing.
• You still hear everything locally. Soundshine passes audio through to your real speakers simultaneously, so you hear the same thing your participants hear.
• It works with any app, not just Zoom. Google Meet, FaceTime, Discord, or any other app that accepts microphone input will work the same way.
• Audio quality stays high. Because the audio is routed digitally (not re-captured through a physical microphone), there’s no quality loss and no background noise.

What About Your Voice?

A common question: if Zoom is using a virtual microphone for system audio, how do your participants hear your voice?

There are a couple of ways to handle this. You can switch your Zoom microphone back to your regular mic when you’re done sharing audio. Or, if you need to talk and share audio at the same time, you can use Zoom’s “Use separate audio device for speaker test” option in advanced audio settings to manage multiple inputs. Some users also set up aggregate devices in macOS’s Audio MIDI Setup utility to combine their real mic and the virtual mic into one input, though that’s more of a power-user move.

For most people, simply toggling the microphone input in Zoom between your real mic and Soundshine is the easiest approach. It takes two clicks.

Other Use Cases

Once you have a virtual audio cable set up, you’ll find uses for it beyond Zoom. Podcast recording, screen recording with system audio, streaming gameplay audio on Discord, or capturing audio from a specific app into your DAW. The same virtual microphone trick works everywhere.

The Quick Version

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the summary:

• Just need to share audio once? Use Zoom’s built-in “Share sound” checkbox when screen sharing. It works, but you have to share your screen too.
• Need something more flexible? Install a virtual audio cable like Soundshine. It creates a virtual mic from your system audio that works in Zoom without screen sharing, with better audio quality and no privacy concerns.

Sharing system audio on a Mac shouldn’t require a workaround, but until Apple adds native audio routing, a lightweight virtual audio device is the cleanest solution.