Troubleshooting
Mac Has No Sound? Here's What to Try in Order
Mac has no sound coming out at all? Walk through the diagnostic order — output device, mute, daemon reset, and hardware checks that actually find it.
You hit play on a song. Nothing. You crank the volume, double-check the speakers aren’t muted, restart the app. Still nothing. Your Mac has gone silent — no system sounds, no music, no notification dings.
“No sound at all” is actually one of the easier Mac audio problems to fix because the diagnostic is binary at each step. Either there’s signal or there isn’t. Here’s the order to work through.
Step 1: confirm it’s actually silent
Try a few different sounds:
- Play a song in Apple Music
- Open
System Settings → Sound → Sound Effectsand click an alert sound - Hit volume up/down — you should see the volume HUD on screen
If the volume HUD doesn’t show or the alert sound is silent, your Mac has true global silence. If only one app is silent, the problem is that app, not your system.
Step 2: check the output device
The #1 cause of “no sound” is that your Mac is sending audio to a device that isn’t there.
Click the volume icon in the menu bar. (If it’s not in the menu bar, System Settings → Control Center → Sound → Show in Menu Bar.)
You’ll see a list of available outputs. Whichever has the speaker icon is currently active. If it’s “Bose Headphones” but you’re not wearing them, your Mac is dutifully playing music to invisible headphones.
Pick MacBook Pro Speakers (or whatever your built-in is called). Test sound. 50% of “no sound” cases fix here.
Step 3: check mute and volume
Sounds dumb but it happens. If you have an external display with built-in speakers, the system sometimes routes audio to the display and reports its volume separately from the system slider.
System Settings → Sound → Output. Look at the Output volume slider at the bottom. Move it to about 75%.
If the mute checkbox is checked, uncheck it. If you don’t see a mute checkbox, that’s because macOS 14 hides it — you have to use the F10 key or check whether the volume slider is at zero.
Also check the Balance slider. If it’s all the way left or right, you’ll only hear sound from one side. Center it.
Step 4: kill the audio daemon
If output device is right and volume is up but you still hear nothing, the audio daemon is probably stuck. This happens after sleep/wake cycles and after unplugging USB audio devices abruptly.
Open Terminal:
sudo killall coreaudiod
Type your password. The daemon restarts in about a second. Test playback.
This fixes a huge percentage of “totally silent Mac” cases. The audio system gets wedged and won’t produce output until something kicks it.
Step 5: try a different output
If built-in speakers are dead, try Bluetooth headphones. If those work, your built-in speaker driver is the problem. If those also fail, the audio chip is the issue.
Test with:
- AirPods or Bluetooth headphones
- Wired headphones in the headphone jack
- USB headphones
- HDMI audio if you have an external monitor with speakers
Each of these uses a different audio path. If one works, you’ve at least narrowed down where the failure is.
Step 6: restart the Mac
If you’ve made it this far, restart properly (Apple menu → Restart, not just sleep). A full restart clears any kernel-level audio driver state that’s stuck.
After restart, test built-in speakers before opening any third-party app. If sound is back, you’re done. If not, continue.
Step 7: check Audio MIDI Setup for ghost devices
Sometimes macOS has a phantom output device set as default — a device you used months ago that’s not actually present. The system tries to play to it and silently fails.
Open Applications → Utilities → Audio MIDI Setup. Look at the device list on the left. Anything that’s grayed out is offline. Anything that has a speaker icon next to it is set as default output.
If your default output is something offline (an HDMI display you no longer have, a USB interface that’s not connected), right-click your built-in speakers and choose Use This Device for Sound Output.
This is a common gotcha after disconnecting from a docking station — the system sometimes leaves the dock’s audio output as default.
Step 8: clear audio preferences
If a phantom device keeps reappearing as default, or if every step above hasn’t worked, the audio preferences are corrupted.
Files in ~/Library/Preferences/:
com.apple.audio.AudioMIDISetup.plistcom.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plistcom.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plistcom.apple.systemsound.plist
Quit any audio app, drag those files to the Trash, restart. macOS rebuilds them.
Doing this manually is error-prone — getting the wrong file can break other things. A cleaning tool that targets only audio plists handles it cleanly.
Sweep clears stale audio prefs and corrupted caches that cause exactly this kind of “no sound for no reason” problem. It can’t fix a blown speaker or damaged headphone jack, but it gets the software-side state out of the way so your hardware can do its job.
Step 9: check for hardware
If you’ve worked through everything and still no sound:
Headphone jack stuck on: macOS thinks headphones are plugged in even though they’re not. Some older MacBook Pros had this issue with debris in the jack. Compressed air on the jack, or insert and remove a 3.5 mm plug a few times.
Liquid damage: even minor liquid exposure can short the speaker output. If your Mac was near a drink, this is suspect.
Logic board audio chip failure: Apple Silicon Macs have audio integrated into the SoC, so this is rare but does happen. Genius Bar diagnostic.
Speaker damage: physical damage to the speakers usually presents as distorted sound at high volume rather than total silence — but blown drivers can sometimes produce no sound at all.
Specific cases
No sound only in Safari/Chrome: browser-specific issue. Quit and reopen the browser. If using a Chromium browser, try chrome://settings/reset or reinstall.
No sound only after sleep: macOS sleep/wake bug. sudo killall coreaudiod works around it; updating macOS often fixes it permanently.
No sound when external monitor connected: HDMI is taking over audio output. Click volume icon, pick MacBook speakers explicitly. To prevent this from happening, in Audio MIDI Setup, set your built-in speakers to default and don’t change it when the monitor connects.
No sound at all, including no startup chime: this is hardware, not software. The startup chime plays before macOS loads, so if it’s silent too, your audio circuitry isn’t working.
Headphone jack works, speakers don’t: stuck headphone jack detection. Plug in headphones, then unplug. Sometimes the jack has dirt that’s tricking the sensor.
Fix order recap
- Confirm true silence with system alert sound
- Pick the right output device in menu bar volume icon
- Check volume slider and mute state
sudo killall coreaudiod- Try a different output (Bluetooth, headphones, HDMI)
- Restart the Mac
- Audio MIDI Setup — kill phantom default devices
- Clear audio preference plists
- Hardware diagnostic if all else fails
The big one is step 2. Most “no sound” cases are just the wrong output selected. Check that first before assuming something’s broken.