Audio device inspector

Browsers treat your device list as a fingerprinting surface. The exact set of hardware names on a machine is close to unique, so until you grant a media permission, the enumeration API returns device entries with blank labels. Some browsers go further and trim the list itself, Safari especially, so even the counts above can grow after you allow access. What you see here is what your browser chooses to expose, which is not always everything Windows has.

Clicking Show device names requests the microphone once, because that single grant is what unlocks readable labels for both inputs and outputs. This tool stops the mic track immediately after, it never reads a sample of audio, it only wants the permission side effect.

One more honest caveat: an entry in this list proves Windows registered an endpoint, not that sound flows through it. A mic can appear here and still be muted, unplugged at the jack, or captured exclusively by another app.

Windows keeps two separate default roles for each direction. The Default Device is where general audio goes: games, browsers, music players. The Default Communications Device is where apps that register as voice chat, like Discord, Zoom, and Teams, send and take their audio. Two roles exist so a call can ring in your headset while music keeps playing on your speakers, and Windows can even duck other audio when the communications device gets busy.

In this list, Chrome on Windows surfaces both roles as extra entries at the top, labeled Default and Communications followed by the name of whichever real device currently holds that role. They are pointers, not hardware, which is why a PC with three physical outputs can honestly report five output entries here. Firefox does not add these role entries at all, one more reason the counts differ between browsers.

Not every entry has hardware behind it. A virtual audio device is a driver endpoint that carries sound between apps instead of to a physical jack, and Windows lists it exactly like real hardware: same device list, same pickers, same default roles. Your browser cannot tell the difference, and neither can Discord or OBS, which is precisely what makes virtual devices useful. If that idea is new, read what a virtual audio cable is.

When patchd launches, its driver adds endpoints to this same list: inputs named Patchd Bus 1 and up, which other apps select as a microphone, and outputs named Patchd Desktop, Patchd Communications, and Patchd Cable, which apps play into. Run this inspector after installing and you will see them appear alongside your real devices, because to Windows they are just devices.

Inputs are capture endpoints: microphones, line-ins, and any virtual device that presents itself as one. Outputs are render endpoints: speakers, headphones, and virtual outputs. One physical device often appears more than once, since a USB interface can expose a separate endpoint per jack and the Default and Communications roles duplicate whatever device holds them. A count higher than the gear on your desk is normal, not a glitch.

What a browser cannot show. This tool cannot read each device's native sample rate: a browser audio context reports the rate of the context it opened, not the hardware's own setting. It also cannot see the driver path a device uses (WASAPI or ASIO), whether another app holds it in exclusive mode, or which app is playing to what. Windows owns those details, and any web tool claiming them is guessing.

The list is the map, routing is the game. Once you know which endpoints exist, the next step is deciding which apps land on which of them, and Windows alone makes that clumsy. See how to route audio per app. And if an input shows up here but you are not sure it actually works, the free mic test gives you real numbers on it.