By on October 13th, 2022

Depending on the softphone your company is utilizing, whether or not you can use your headset may be connected to your PC’s browser settings.

Softphones like NICE’s CXone and Genesys utilize the sound settings of your PC, plus the security settings within your browser, to connect to your headset and its microphone. This can get tricky to navigate, depending on the browser being used. Let’s take a look at how to set your browser’s security settings to be able to use your headset and its microphone.

For Chrome browsers:

Special Note: You can’t change your settings when in incognito mode! So if you have Incognito set by default, you need to turn that off and change settings within the normal browser state.
If you don’t allow the browser to ask permission to use your microphone, you might be stuck hearing a conversation instead of participating.
Remember that if you’re using a Bluetooth dongle with your headset, then that needs to be specified as the default device instead of the headset itself!

For Edge browsers:

Using the 3 dots in the upper right-hand corner, near your profile bubble, you’ll get to your Settings menu.
The microphone settings are kept in the Cookies and Site Permissions area. You’ll need to make sure you have the correct microphone specified in order to use it with the softphone!

For Firefox browsers:

Other things to consider:

While your softphone application might be tied to your browser permissions, you will also need to make sure that your system sound settings are correct. As mentioned before, if you have a Bluetooth headset that utilizes as USB dongle with it (such as the Voyager Focus UC), you’ll want to make sure that the USB dongle is set to the primary audio device within the PC. For Poly/Plantronics headsets, this is either the BT600 or BT700, and for Jabra headsets this is the Link370 or Link380 for the most current models.