If your earbuds or headphones aren’t working, but your speakers are follow the steps below to troubleshoot the issue:
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Restart the Chromebook
- Restarting the Chromebook is always a good start to fixing any problem. Glitches and caching issues can cause a number of problems, including issues with headphones.
- You can do this easily by pressing and holding the refresh
key (above the 4 on the keyboard) and pressing and releasing the Power key.
- Your Chromebook will restart. After it’s done. Login to your Google Account, plug in your headphones and see if there’s any sound.
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Check that your headphones or earbuds are plugged in all the way
- Take your fingers and check that your headphones or earbuds are fully plugged into the audio jack. Some Chromebooks have an initial “notch” that you need to push through for it to detect any audio device connected to the 3.5mm audio port.
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Use another pair of headphones or earbuds
- It could be that it’s not your Chromebook’s sound that’s not working, but perhaps your headphones itself. Try using a different pair and see if it works (or try your headphones on another device).
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Do the jiggle test
- Push your headphone connector into the jack and give it a slight jiggle. Be very gentle as this is sensitive hardware. It should remain stable without any jiggling. If it jiggles, the Chromebooks audio jack may be broken or defective.
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Select “headphones” for the sound output
- Plug in your headphones.
- Click on your Google Account in the bottom-right of the screen to open the status widget. Look at the volume slider.
- On the very right of it, you’ll see a headphones icon. Click on it.
- You’ll now see an audio control submenu slide out with additional volume control options.
- Check to make sure that the sound output is routed to the proper destination. The output should have a few options like “speakers (internal)” and “headphones.” Choose “headphones.”
- Force your Chromebook to rescan for connected headphones
Step 1: Unplug all connected devices from your Chromebook (this includes USB drives, SD cards, and any connected earbuds or headphones.)
Step 2: Turn off your Chromebook
Step 3: Plug in just your audio device
Step 4: Power on your Chromebook
This will force your Chromebook to scan for any connected devices during the boot sequence. If there was any caching issue, it should be cleared so it can look for your earbuds or headphones.
If it's still not working, there is likely an issue with the Chromebook itself. Please submit a ticket at support.rrps.net if this is the case.