For us that work with audio all the time, sometimes, getting something recorded fast is all we want. Not having to deal with a big condenser mic, an audio interface, or a USB preamp, would be great, wouldn’t it? Maybe we just want to connect an external mic like a lapel mic, or a Rode VideoMicro, and get our voice recorded. But, what if you have a MacBook Pro? It just has a headphone output! So, no way we can record audio straight to it, right? Wrong! And that’s what I’m going to show you in this post: How to connect an external mic straight to your MacBook Pro!
Ps: It works.
Rode Videomicro 
Lapel mic 
MacBook Pro mic input 
Lapel mic
Our beloved (or not so much) MacBook Pros only have one headphone out, which means that it just works out of the box with phones. However, it has the capability of being a mic input if done the right way. For that, we’ll need an external gadget. Off course, Apple! This gadget is the headset splitter! It splits your headphone jack into a mic and a headphone jack! This headset splitter can be easily found on Amazon and it’s pretty cheap. Link bellow!
So, you can imagine that it will be easy peasy, just connect your mic there and it will work, right? Not, so much. The headphone jack will expect a certain combination of TRS, TRRS, jacks there, so if you make it wrong it won’t be recognized as an external microphone. The trick is delivering the right combination. What I found is that your headphone has to be a TRRS, while you mic has to be a TRS. I haven’t tried with a TRS headphone, so let me you know if you did it. After you have everything connected make sure to disconnect and connect again. And there you go! Now your mic input is not using the built in mic, but an external mic. You can use it with any DAW now, just select your mic input from your computer.
This was pretty useful to me, I hope it was for you! Let me know in the comments if you were struggling with this and now know how to fix it!
Equipment you can buy to use an external mic in your MacBook Pro
Headsets Splitter
Rode Videomicro
Lavalier Lapel Mic Kit
Build your own MIDI Controller
DIY MIDI Controller Workshop
Making Music with Arduino
Fazendo Música com Arduino (português)
Curso gratuito
Curso completo
Equipment I use
Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II
Lavalier Lapel Microphone Kit
MXL 990 Condenser Microphone
Focusrite Scarlett 18i8