The headphone jack on my MacBook Pro just stopped working. How do I fix it?

Question

The headphone jack on my MacBook Pro stopped working. It was working fine, then just spontaneously stopped while I was using external speakers plugged into the output jack. Now, neither speakers nor 3 different headphones have sound. The internal speaker on my MacBook Pro still works.

Mattias Wadman · Answer 1 · 2019-07-08T22:02:06.723

95

I've had similar issues and restarting coreaudio work for me. Run this in a terminal (you might be prompted for your password).

sudo pkill coreaudiod

If your curious sudo is something used to run commands as administrator (SU-DO as in super user do) and pkill sends signals to processes based on name, in this case coreaudiod, which is the name of the coreaudio daemon process. When it gets a terminate signal sent by pkill it will terminate and then macOS will restart it again.

edited Jul 08 '19 at 22:02

answered Oct 02 '18 at 12:08

Mattias Wadman

1,061

4

It's my second time coming accross this answer... Brilliant! – craastad Apr 15 '22 at 15:55
:) weirdly i haven't needed to do this for a long time. Maybe newer macOS versions have fixed things? – Mattias Wadman Apr 15 '22 at 18:05
1

I just had to do this today on a 2021 Mac M1... It happened waking from sleep after using Logic X and Traktor the night before. So it happens when something is really messing with the audio outputs. – craastad Apr 15 '22 at 22:06
Yeah that sounds very possible. Think i used to do more airplay and used more random bluetooth devices before – Mattias Wadman Apr 16 '22 at 06:44
2

This worked for me when headphones-only decided to quit: the speakers still worked, and they would turn off when I plugged in headphones but no sound would materialize through the headphones. Killing coreaudiod and restarting Spotify fixed it. – Gena Kukartsev Jun 14 '22 at 18:26
1

This is brilliant. Had the same issue as @GenaKukartsev – mvinayakam May 24 '23 at 05:29
Amazing. It fixed my audio issue with audio jack. wondering why did it happened all of a sudden? @MattiasWadman is there a permanent fix – Akshansh Shrivastava Oct 16 '23 at 14:23
Hey glad it fixed it. No permanent fix that i know of. I have't had the issue myself for a long time so i suspect it might be related to which coreaudio features or audio hardware is using. – Mattias Wadman Oct 17 '23 at 07:11
Thanks! Solution still Works. – Yatix Nov 29 '23 at 13:37
On macOS 14.3 - same as @GenaKukartsev - restarting coreaudiod fixes no headphone output – karolba Feb 27 '24 at 22:49

score 51 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 17 '12 at 00:40

51

This happened to me yesterday. I tried three different headphones.

Go to System Preferences > Sound > Output.
Plug your headphones in if you haven't yet.
Look at the bottom where it says Output Volume and un-check the mute button.

edited Oct 17 '12 at 00:40

Cajunluke

17,704

answered Oct 15 '12 at 17:49

Khing Panusiri

511

1

Can't believe the resolution was so simple. What do folks think caused the output to mute by itself? My headphones were working on other devices so I spent so much time trying to clean my headphone jack only to realize it was a software toggle. Thanks! – anaik Jul 03 '22 at 20:56

score 20 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 26 '13 at 21:19

I had this same problem with my MacBook Pro 13" (mid-2009) running OS 10.6.8. Somewhere on the internet I found the answer. After plugging in the headphones and looking at the System Preferences/Sound, you may not see (in theis model) the option for Headphones, only for Internal Speaker. (Of course, you must first check that the audio port is selected for output, since this Mac has only a single port audio. Also, that the mute is not selected.) After seeing no Headphone option, put the Mac to sleep and wake it up again. Voila! Your headphones/external speakers will work.

Does anyone know what the permanent fix is for this problem?

iskra · Answer 4 · 2014-08-26T11:49:47.220

13

If you see red glowing light coming from it try the toothpick approach: take a toothpick and poke around in the jack until light turns off.

edited Aug 26 '14 at 11:49

answered Jul 03 '12 at 10:02

iskra

5,558

score 10 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 03 '12 at 00:16

10

Try resetting PRAM.

Restart your machine and hold down Command ⌘+Option ⌥+P+R all at the same time as soon as it turns on. Keep holding until it resets.

edited Aug 03 '12 at 00:16

Cajunluke

17,704

answered Aug 03 '12 at 00:03

JamiePatt

4,204

1

Simply restarting fixed it for me – CrazyTim May 18 '22 at 23:25

score 4 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 28 '12 at 10:54

Let me tell how I solved my problem (that was: internal speakers worked whereas the headphones plugged in didn't):

I plugged in the headphones.
I pressed the "F10/Sound OnOff" key on the keyboard

That was it! The headphones worked again.

But why? To my understanding the reason is that Apple attaches the sound-on-or-off-state to the current output device.

So switching off the sound while having plugged in the headphones makes the headphones be silent. Plug them off and you will hear the internal speakers. Plug them in again (after a minute or after half a year) and they still will be silent. Because YOU switched off the sound OF THE HEADPHONES (some months ago).

(It is the same the other way round. But in that case you probably would try the F10 button ...)

(Note: you can see this behaviour also with the checked or unchecked mute button in System Preferences > Sound > Output, as mentioned in a post above. Its state depends on the selected output device.)

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 22 '20 at 18:15

1

I've got a weird solution from here and I'm glad it worked for me.

Connect your headphones into the audio socket.
From the apple icon menu in the top left corner of the os x screen, tell your computer to go to sleep.
Immediately wake it up again from sleep.

answered Apr 22 '20 at 18:15

Rishi Kulshreshtha

521

Very similar thing helped on my M1 Air: 0. connect headphones 1. select speakers as output 2. put computer to sleep and wait ~5-10s 3. wake up computer 4. select headphones as output – svobol13 Dec 15 '21 at 11:17

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered May 03 '22 at 18:55

1

Quote @mattias's answer. For people who are not familiar with the terminal, open activity monitor and search coreaudiod, then quit it.

(why do we still have this bug in 2022?!)

answered May 03 '22 at 18:55

Lynne

196

score 1 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 17 '12 at 13:51

1

I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue for you; if you go under System Preferences → Sound → Output, you should see Headphones as one of the output devices. Most likely the audio is being directed to some other output device (like Soundflower or Boom). Just make sure that Headphones is selected.

edited Oct 17 '12 at 13:51

Alex

1,432

answered Jul 02 '12 at 02:21

pasawaya

2,306

score 1 · Answer 10 · edited Feb 01 '13 at 10:38

1

In the sounds control panel with the sound output tab selected, be sure to have use audio port for output, rather than input... this was why mine was not working.

edited Feb 01 '13 at 10:38

mmmmmm

30,160

answered Feb 01 '13 at 04:18

Tim

11

The headphone jack on my MacBook Pro just stopped working. How do I fix it?

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