Getting My Microphone Working on Ubuntu 20.04

One day in the middle of recording lectures, my microphone stopped working. I was using OBS Studio and noticed that there was no indication of mic activity. The fix turned out to be simple, based on this answer. Rename the directory ~/.config/pulse as something else, such as ~/.config/pulse-old. The next time you start an application that needs sound, it should recreate ~/.config/pulse. It worked for me.

Only thing to note is that the answer I linked is more complicated and inconvenient than necessary. It’s possible that there might be a scenario in which it’s necessary to log out and log back in. If such a scenario exists, I don’t know what it is. All you should have to do is rename that directory.