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Macbook Pro won't switch back to internal speakers after bluetooth headphones

S

SamAshleyBlogs

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2010
106
4
Columbus, Ohio
Longest title ever. But.

I was listening to music on my new 13" macbook pro (with touchbar) earlier while working. After turning them off, confirming they're not connected to my computer anymore, confirming they're not on the list in my sound preferences, selecting "internal speakers" in sound preferences, and ensuring that the mute box isn't checked I STILL can't hear any audio.

Sure, I could restart my computer and have it work again. But I'm working and I don't want to save everything I'm working on, restart, re-open, etc. It shouldn't be this hard to switch between audio sources. Let me rephrase, actually. It shouldn't be completely glitchy and impossible to switch between audio sources when all appears to be working properly on the surface.

Fixes? Thoughts?
 
Seems like a software glitch unique to the new models. If there's any way to report it to Apple - perhaps take it to the local Apple store? Then at least they can work on a fix.

Until then, no idea other than a fresh install of OS X as to what might fix it :-/
 
I and others have had similar trouble with older models. I think it may be a hardware issue, never did fully resolve it. For a new machine I'd call Apple.
 
This has happened to me a couple of times in the last few months. Suck it up and restart. It's an easy fix.
 
boss.king said:
This has happened to me a couple of times in the last few months. Suck it up and restart. It's an easy fix.
Click to expand...
I know restarting isn't "hard". I know it doesn't take a ton of time. But I'm not sure you go from headphones to not as much as I do in a day. For a machine that costs this much money, I shouldn't have to restart all day because the audio glitches out.
 
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SamAshleyBlogs said:
I know restarting isn't "hard". I know it doesn't take a ton of time. But I'm not sure you go from headphones to not as much as I do in a day. For a machine that costs this much money, I shouldn't have to restart all day because the audio glitches out.
Click to expand...

I go from headphones to speakers to airplay/Bluetooth streaming and back probably close to 100 times a day. The odd restart every couple of weeks is the a deal breaker for me. Sure, I wish it would work perfectly, but it's not as much of an inconvenience to me as it is to you, clearly.
 
Did an SMC reset. Worked for a little while. Then, internal speakers stopped working again—this time without bluetooth headphones even being connected. Lawd.
 
Ok, now I don't even have to use my headphones for it to stop working. Internal speakers were working; then, I muted them while on a phone call (on my phone, not computer). Unmuted after the call. And now no workie.

What. In the hell.
 
That is very strange. I use my Bose QC35s with my 2015 15" pro and have no issues.

What headphones are you using? And have you tried other headphone/speakers.
 
It may be a thing with the latest OS update? I had the same thing on my iMac 5k yesterday so it may be nothing to do with your MBP. Frustrating. A reboot sorted it out, but I couldn't fix it just with 'settings'
 
Yeah dude, return your laptop. It happens to me maybe a couple of times a month. It sounds like you have it every few hours. There's something seriously wrong with your machine.
 
@jerryk: "I use my Bose QC35s with my 2015 15" pro and have no issues."

Funny, I use my Bose QC35s with my 2015 15" pro and it happens to me all the time.

But from my experience, it does seem to be related to certain applications. I think the intended experience is that when you disconnect an audio device that is currently in use, the "default" audio device should drop down to either the previous one you were using, or to the built-in device (probably the latter). It may be that the application has some role in following suit, which could explain why some applications have no trouble with this (in my experience), and others aren't written correctly. That could include some of Apple's own apps, btw, in which case we'd call them "bugs".

Also, I'm still on Mac Yosemite; that might have something to do with it as well.
 
I have problems with internal speakers after using bluetooth headphones. The only solution I knew was to reboot my Mac, but that was very annoying. Until I found better workaround from here https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-sound-on-mac:
- open Activity Monitor
- search for coreaudiod process and stop it (select it and click X - force process to quit)
MacOS restarted this process and voila my internal speakers are working again. No need to reboot.

This is so annoying bug, why it isn't fixed yet!?
 
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it is April 2019, I have a 2017 Macbook pro running the last version of OS 10.14.4 and THIS BUG IS STILL HERE. I cant believe that apple hasn't fixed it yet. I have to restart my computer basically everyday because I have a bluetooth speaker on my desk setup that I like to use, so every time I have to disconnect the computer from the setup I need to restart it since the sound stops working. Sometimes the audio icon is completely grayed out some other days it looks normal but it just doesn't work. I have been in touch with apple's costumer service before and they always ask you to restart the computer, which solves the problem, but it is not the point.

Neither restarting the coreaudiod from the terminal nor from the activity monitor has solved the problem for me. I am really fed up with this. I have a super expensive computer that has the dummest mistake for apparently 10 years now based on previous comments here.
 
edufinn said:
I have problems with internal speakers after using bluetooth headphones. The only solution I knew was to reboot my Mac, but that was very annoying. Until I found better workaround from here https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-sound-on-mac:
- open Activity Monitor
- search for coreaudiod process and stop it (select it and click X - force process to quit)
MacOS restarted this process and voila my internal speakers are working again. No need to reboot.

This is so annoying bug, why it isn't fixed yet!?
Click to expand...

Confirming that on a macbook pro 2018.

Had a bluetooth connection to a bose qc35 II

disconnected the connection to the headset. Output was set to MBP internal speakers, but no sound.

Killed the process coreaudiod --> audio came back

Thanks a lot for the hint
 
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suisse said:
Confirming that on a macbook pro 2018.

Had a bluetooth connection to a bose qc35 II

disconnected the connection to the headset. Output was set to MBP internal speakers, but no sound.

Killed the process coreaudiod --> audio came back

Thanks a lot for the hint
Click to expand...


UH I have a 2015 MacBook Air (bought in late 2016 if that matters?) and I paired it with AIRPODS and now the internal speakers won't work. Even shutting down and restarting doesn't work. Killing coreaudiod does nothing. I PAIRED IT WITH APPLE'S OWN BLUETOOTH DEVICE AND IT BROKE. I'm gonna.....throw this thing out the window.
 
edufinn said:
I have problems with internal speakers after using bluetooth headphones. The only solution I knew was to reboot my Mac, but that was very annoying. Until I found better workaround from here https://macpaw.com/how-to/fix-sound-on-mac:
- open Activity Monitor
- search for coreaudiod process and stop it (select it and click X - force process to quit)
MacOS restarted this process and voila my internal speakers are working again. No need to reboot.

This is so annoying bug, why it isn't fixed yet!?
Click to expand...
omg, finally! was looking for workaround without rebooting. I looked at Activity Monitor before to find what to kill. It worked. Thanks!!!
 
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Just posting here to confirm another user having these issues. My macbook air 2014 just randomly got internal sound back after months of it missing. Issues began after having connected AirPods, and now I'm scared of connecting them again.

Tried SMC reset, which changed the audio icon from greyed out to permanently muted. One of the absolutely most annoying things about this is that video with audio won't even play muted for me when the internal sound is out. But if I reconnect the AirPods I can play videos (plus sound through AirPods) again.
 
Hackintoshes had this problem (e.g. if I plugged in my headphones to the front audio jack of my rig, music played fine, but if I took them out, the sound would not come out of the speakers connected to the rear of the device). The fix came about with patching the AppleHDA text. Apple really need to look into this.
 
SamAshleyBlogs said:
Longest title ever. But.

I was listening to music on my new 13" macbook pro (with touchbar) earlier while working. After turning them off, confirming they're not connected to my computer anymore, confirming they're not on the list in my sound preferences, selecting "internal speakers" in sound preferences, and ensuring that the mute box isn't checked I STILL can't hear any audio.

Sure, I could restart my computer and have it work again. But I'm working and I don't want to save everything I'm working on, restart, re-open, etc. It shouldn't be this hard to switch between audio sources. Let me rephrase, actually. It shouldn't be completely glitchy and impossible to switch between audio sources when all appears to be working properly on the surface.

Fixes? Thoughts?
Click to expand...

It's happening to me too with MBP 15" 2017 and one of my Bluetooth headsets. There's a way to fix it without restarting. Go to Terminal and kill all audio related processes:

sudo killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar
sudo killall -9 com.apple.audio.DriverHelper
sudo killall -9 com.apple.audio.SandboxHelper
sudo killall -9 coreaudiod
​
(After the first command it will ask for your password, that's your Mac's regular user password you use at login)

After executing the commands it should get fixed, though audio will reset to "0" (muted) so make sure to volume up.
 
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canpoyrazoglu said:
It's happening to me too with MBP 15" 2017 and one of my Bluetooth headsets. There's a way to fix it without restarting. Go to Terminal and kill all audio related processes:

sudo killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar​
sudo killall -9 com.apple.audio.DriverHelper​
sudo killall -9 com.apple.audio.SandboxHelper​
sudo killall -9 coreaudiod​
​
(After the first command it will ask for your password, that's your Mac's regular user password you use at login)

After executing the commands it should get fixed, though audio will reset to "0" (muted) so make sure to volume up.
Click to expand...

I can confirm that the above worked for me thank you so much....
 
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