It's weird, I know, but Background Music does actually need that permission, at least for now.

BGMDriver (the audio driver part of Background Music) creates a virtual output device, which receives your system's audio, and a virtual input device, which plays back the same audio. BGMApp (the app part of Background Music) gets the audio from the virtual input device and then plays it through your real audio device. The virtual input device can also be used to record your system's audio.

Technically, the "microphone access" dialog is asking for permission to access input devices, so BGMApp can't use the virtual input device without that permission.

There are other ways to send the audio to BGMApp, shared memory using XPC for example, but using a virtual input device was easier at the time. I've wanted to try using shared memory for a long time to see if it could help reduce latency and CPU use, and getting rid of the confusing microphone access dialog would be nice as well.

Hello, I just found your amazing software today and I love it!

Unfortunately, first running it on macOS Mojave (10.14.4) without microphone access would render it unusable. I was unable to play anything through Background Music until I allow microphone access.

I installed it through Homebrew (Background Music 0.2.0) if you're wondering.

Is there any workaround for this? I don't really need to manage my audio through Background Music. I just want to manage application volumes.

Thank you anyway!