My MacBook Speakers Stopped Working
Recently my sweet, innocent, little puppy, Kaze, step on my MacBook (I know, gasp). Everything seemed fine at first but I soon discovered that the internal speakers on my MacBook stopped working completely. After browsing the Apple Support Site to no avail. I was able to find the following information helpful and ultimately it solved my problem. (whew!)
“That kind of thing happens when of the tabs inside a phono jack is bent. They can often be fixed with a small pick, but it would be very easy to break them off too. You will want to bring it into the shop if you haven’t done that kind of thing before, and the tabs aren’t always accessible anyway, especially on the little jacks.
If you haven’t yanked a cable or anything like that, it’ll probably be covered under the warranty.
If Apple decide that it’s not a warranty item for some reason, and that you need a nice new expensive board, you could you a Griffin iMic or something as a replacement.”
From this, I took my headphone plug and wiggled it around (gently) and it worked. Wierd huh? I definately pulled a Paul and hated my mac for about an hour. All is well though and I’m right back where I should be. Thanks iMeowBot (whoever you are) for the tip!
Yeah the same thing happend to me, you can see the optical glow coming out of the port when nothing is plugged in. Alas the wiggly solution doesn’t work for me, I guess mine are a little too bent, but I’m glad all is well for you!
Sorry to hear that. Keep us posted on your progress so we can add it here for others. Thanks!
Mine just stopped working today. Works fine over the stereo but internal speakers are gone when I unplug. I don’t see any red light so I guess it’s not the same problem.
Man, I’m sorry to hear your speakers stopped working, it’s so frustrating, I know. The red light only flashed for me for a brief period and turned off, also I was working in the dark and was able to notice it. That’s when I tried plugging my headphones and it did work, but when they were unplugged, no sound. I found that forum and MacGyvered it from there. Good luck, and let us know how it turned out. Thanks!
Same thing just happened to me. I was listening to music last night with my external speakers as I always do every day…and then got to work with my macbook and went to listen to something online and now the internal speakers are not working and the red light in the plug hole is on.
ARGH.
I swear this Macbook is the most annoying computer I have ever bought. One thing after another. It isn’t even 6 mos old.
I’m sorry Jennifer,
Have you tried taking it in to the store and having them look at it? (I know that’s probably not what you were wanting to hear.)
i was having the same problem and this cured my computer! i have been using my headphones all week and the first time i tried to listen to something through the internal speakers nothing! i wiggled my headphones around a little after i plugged it in and it after a few tries my speakers worked just fine.
That’s great to hear! Glad we were able to help
Yay! I love you. Stupid red light, no sound. Wiggle… wiggle… sound!
Thanks muchly.
Same thing happened to me, except I wasn’t using headphones. It just stopped working.
Wiggle wiggle, it works. Brilliant. Yeah, Macs are a huuuuge step above PCs. Right.
Right On! After the initial alarm of seeing my laptop emitting an ominous red glow, I came across this site. So like everyone else I too tried some persistent wiggling and voila!, it’s fixed. Thanks for the thread - Peace
Same thing happened here, expect i came across this forum before calling apple..and the wiggling didnt work for me..i spent over an hour on the phone doing everything this man made me do..still didnt work. now hes making me send it out for repairs. can anyone tell me who has a macbook when u look into the headphone jack how many little tab things do u see? on the right i see 2 stickin out a little but on the left i can only see one closer to the front of the hole, i am sure i am having the same problem, i just cant seem to solve it by wiggling. can u tell me if maybe im missing a tab? or if its pushed in? i would rather not have to send my computer out, and have to back up all my files..that is just a pain =[ ugh.
Ya, wiggling totally worked for me too - weird… This is a feature they should really rethink
everything s fine in my macbook except when i put my external speakers.. only the left side of the external speaker works. the right external speaker doesnt work… i’ve tried other speakers on my computer and the same thing happens.. I connect my Mp3 player to the external speakers and the L and R speakers seem to work!! what could it be???
Only thing I can think of is that you might actually have a wire disconnected on your motherboard. The wiggle trick probably won’t work and you will need to either take or send it in for repair. Sorry…
one more Question… it’s not about speakers though… when i put a cd in my Computer it’s sometimes gets stuck… i have the APPLECARE PLAN so They should be able to fix it, but if it’s left like that would it cause any permanenent damage to my computer????
wiggling it… nothin. I’m tryin this solution for my girlfriend’s computer, but to no avail. I’m extremely persistent, so whenever I’m over here, and I see that red light, I’ll start jigglin ad wigglin again. thanks for the posts so I cnan get an idea of how to fix this.
Nope. This problem has happened on my I-Mac… red light on. No sound on external speakers. I’ve wiggled for ages… nothing. Red light remains on. Speakers remain silent. Driving me insane! Especially because lugging a large-screen I-Mac back to the store is a huge pain in the *** - especially so they can fix something as small and seemingly insignificant as a faulty jack… and especially since there are always long lines at the store at the repairs dept. and I have a neverending stream of deadlines….!!
And they’ll probaby tell me to leave it with them and come back in a week!
I hear ya.. Mine is glowing as I type and i have been very persistent about wiggling, and i called someone to ask for help and they sent me a box for my macbook and want me to ship is out. Nooooo waaaayyyy. i cant have it gone for that long…
Use a toothpick to reset the port. Insert the toothpick gently and try to press some kind of little button inside.
It worked for me.
Be carefully not to break the toothpick inside.
hey humber is the small button youre talking about straight back?
yea i have had the same exact problem but my macbook i have through school and i tryed the wiggle thing and it didnt work if i get it sent in i wont have it for a long time its starting to piss me off nothing is working and all i want is my internal speakers to work..
Ben,
I had the same problem, and I use my computer for school too so I didn’t want to send it in and I delt with the speakers not working for 4 months or so, when it first happned i tried the wiggle thing with the headphones and that didnt work then i tried the hair pin and that didnt work. and then 4 months later there was a bobby pin laying next to my computer so just for the heck of it i wiggled it like crazy and nothing happened and i just had it in there an was wiggling it and wiggling it, and i finaly was just like I GIVE UP and i pulled the thing out and a song started playing. so if you really dont want to send it in, (completely understand) just try the hair pin thing, after i tried and it didnt work i thought for sure i must be having a different problem but dont give up on it, just wiggle it like crazy and then stop if your getting frustrated and try the next day.
best of luck!
hope it works for you eventually!
Hey, just did the toothpick trick and it worked beautifully. I just wiggled against one of the bumps on the inside of the jack VERY gently. If you try, make sure to turn on a tune so you can tell it worked. Thanks guys!
That’s great! I’m so glad it worked for you.
- Brent
i’m sort of having the opposite problem…?
my internal speakers work fine, but something seems to be wrong with my headphone jack. i suddenly can’t get sound to headphones or external speakers with a 3mm audio cord. i always use external speakers to listen to music, so this is very frustrating. my 2 month old white macbook (not pro) does recognize that there are headphones though, because the internal speakers shut off when they are plugged in. i do get a little bit of static through to the headphones though. does anybody have suggestions or know what could be wrong?
Wiggling worked! Has anyone had this recur? Or is this a long term fix?
WOW! Great advice. Sound just stopped suddenly after i listened to music using my iphone headset. perhaps i should not use that anymore on the macbook.;)
red light came on. i googled and got here. a wiggling persistently solved the problem, for now, at least.
i did toothpick trick and it worked now. thank you guys.
I seem to be having the same problem as everyone else. both my internal and external speakers aren’t working and the headphone jack is always lit up red. the only thing is, this all started when i accidentally spilled some water near the speakers. i tried wiggling and the toothpick but nothing seems to work. do you think my spilling water might have caused permanent damage?
Y’all, this is insanity - the WIGGLE WOO worked for me also!
Craziness! I can’t believe it, especially after the “I’m a Dell and You’re a Mac” commercials where we’re like haha the p.c. isn’t very sophisticated!
Apple should put the wiggle trick in their help menu!
My speakers are working again! Woo-woo!
Thanks!
Worked fine for me, i plug my earphone plug for 1/3 of its lenght and I turn it around quite fast and it worked perfect!
OK SO i totally just had the same issue my outbound stopped working and only when external speakers were plugged in it worked..apple couldnt help for shit..enough though i heart them..heres what u do..take your ipod headset plug it in and out a few times and it should make ur outbound the same again
Hi everyone, how frustrating is this!!?!??
I have EXACTLY the same problem with the red light and have tried toothpicks, needles, safetypins, bobyypins, headphones etc to no avail.
It would really help is someone could tell me how hard I should be wiggling? And how many times - ie a few times, what does this mean?
And if I try the headphone method, should I spin it around the entire jack?
Thanks for your help!
Thanks a lot! Damn was I pissed when this happened to me. Thank god I have the entire mac-community armed with toothpicks and hairpins right behind me. Haha.
It worked!! I read this and all I had to do was blow really hard into the head phone jack and BINGO! It’s kind of lame that I had to look on the internet for hours to fix a problem for a brand new computer.
i had the same problem. no sound and red light comming out of the jack stick. tried wiggel, pull it out plug it in over and over again. restart and use diskutillty repair. then i triede to restart in Windows. and restart in mac workede for a coupel of minutes but then the musik startede to, fall out and in, if i look in system pref. evertime it falls out the internel speaker disapers. looks like a bad wirering. hops it is going to last………..
it comes and goes at the moment, i will see how it goes over the weekend, and if it keeps falling out i have to send it to repair, or is there any other way, would prefer to not give away my mac for a month
my mac is about 4-5 months old macbook 13.3 black.
ok, thanks for the posts people. i’m in San Jose kickin it for biz, and my speakers just stopped working on the plane over. I didn’t bring any headphones, and was getting a little antsy because i wanted to listen to music in my room on the macbook. Soooo… i just took the little string from one of my Puma track pants and shoved it in the laptop. BINGO!!!
Take that Macgyver!!
OH MY GOODNESS
IT WORKS!
It took me ages! BUT IT WORKED
Just had the same problem occur. wiggling the headphone plug fixed it. i was about to start getting annoyed until i found this page.
thanks for the tips.
Same thing happened to me when i was at the airport and had my headphones plugged in. the next thing i know the internal speakers dont work. I read the post that said to put the headphone jack in 1/3 way in and wiggle around a little why playing a song and it just came right on, even after wiggling for a while with the jack farther in.
I tried the toothpick trick and it worked immediately…
Same thing happened to me after using the iphone headset on my sony vayo..it seems that the iphone headsets have some wired effect when used with any pc..very strange
same thing with me, wiggling worked after having found out what that is (i am not a native english speaker…) THANKS
Thank you! The toothpick worked after an hour or two of panic! I had to wiggle it in a specific spot in order to hear the sound on the internal speakers. It is now working perfectly. If only the flaw didn’t exist to begin with. Thanks for the help.
Woow. It worked. Saw someone’s posting about the blowing method, I tried, and voila!!! It worked. Amazing, can you imagine people were solving these kind of problems when there wasn’t the internet?!?!
Thanks. R.
Thank the LORD! It worked! I was getting frustrated because it happened at just the worst moment (trying to show my friend a funny video, then we have to wait, fix it, then it’s not funny, ect) anyways! You are my hero. I was getting seriously cheezed off.
OMG i was about to give up, the wiggling DOES work haha!!just dont give up! put the heaphone jack half way and keep wiggling it!
I found something else that worked! The same issue happened on a customers’ MacBook. The Sound control panel only allowed the option to choose Digital Audio, the internal speakers did not show up as an option, and the prohibit sign (circle with a line through it) showed up when pressing the sound up, sound down keys.
As suggested, I tried plugging and unplugging a set of external headphones into the headphone jack and wiggling them, but no luck after several tries. I wasn’t ready to try the toothpick suggestion yet.
However, I decided to turn my attention to the audio-in jack, so I plugged the same headphones into the that jack (next to the headphone jack), removed them, and voila - all was back to normal.
Hope this helps some of you out there. –Andrew
Just tried blowing into the headphone jack after two Leopard re-installs and hours of research to fix missing internal speakers that started immediately after the first Leopard install (for 3 total).
It worked!
I don’t know whether I should be happy it’s working or sad that that was all it needed the whole time..
Wiggle did not work, toothpick also did not work.
But a can of compressed air did the trick. Just give a few short blasts into the headphone jack and all that dust that is making your switch stick comes right out. I recommend everyone with this problem try the compressed air first! Much safer and more effective!
I don’t know if anyone can help me out here - owing to an unlucky stumble, I have the tip of a half a (snapped) headphone plug stuck in my MacBook’s headphone socket. It’s just come back from the Apple shop and they can’t do anything about it. So before I investing in a set of jewellers drills, does anyone know if there’s a software override for this? It’s very frustrating - it makes the Mac sound on boot, but is otherwise mute.
Same prob out here, solved it though…. Kinda simple jus follow the steps below:
1. Play some music
2. Take a earphone and plug it in halfway down the earphone port..
3. Gently push the headphone to the left, this will make sure the the earphone plug will come in contact wit a tiny button(on the right side) inside the port.
4. Shake the earphone a bit n voila ur macbook will start playing again…..
Thank You SO Much! My parents bought me my mac as a bday/christmas present. and my speakers have not been working for about 4 days. and i was way to scared to tell them. ha, but the wiggle thing worked for me also!
do you know if it is a permanent fix??
For me it was permanent (so far anyway). I only had the issue once and never since. (fingers crossed)
good job with the wiggle whoever came up with the “original wiggle” i just wiggled it a bit back and forth with iTunes playing and sound came back out of speakers within 2 seconds
Thanks for the help, the wigglin didn’t work for me. I was ready to scream, but the toothpick did. If I wanted stupid problems like this I would have gotten a pc.
I hate my mac. I hate apple. My mac is always giving ALL sort of problems the most recent thing is this infuriating red light. I managed to repair with the wigglin but the very next day it came back. I wiggled for hours and then i tried the toothpick thing for another hour or so. I got so frustrated that i was about to smash the da** macbook into the floor so i hit it gently 3 times near the jack and it worked.
wiggling and inspecting a few times until the red light went off worked for me — thanks! (next time i’ll try compressed air.)
PROBLEM IN REVERSE
Same problem, but in reverse- my internal speakers work, but the jack does not. no red light. I saw someone else wrote about this, but no one responded. Can anyone suggest anything?
It seems like everyone is missing an important step:
1. More yourself a tall drink, a cold beer, or a glass of wine. And be sure there’s more where that came from.
2. Frack with the headphone jack for anywhere between 60 seconds and 3 hours. I have best luck with a headphone plug itself…
3. Enjoy the sound while it lasts. If not, sorry.
Wiggled jack : nothing… I thought I was doomed and started to weep…But with a toothpick : perfect. gentle little nudges inside the hole did the trick!
Thanks guys!