up vote 9 down vote favorite

To be clear, the audio on my laptop is working just fine. Other applications in Ubuntu play sounds as expected. Firefox, however, won't output any audio through the native speakers or headphones. There is one exception: when I use HDMI from PC to TV then Firefox audio correctly plays through TV.

I'm new to Ubuntu so please respond with step-by-step instructions geared at beginners. Thanks!

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1  
If 15.04 is like 14.04, you can go to System Settings --> Sound and select the Applications tab. With FF and audio supposedly playing, how are the settings there? – user3169 Aug 27 '15 at 4:41
    
CubebUtils + shows volume level... still no sound. – Loewen-Samuels Aug 27 '15 at 19:28
up vote 14 down vote accepted

If you install an app called "pavucontrol", (direct link apt://pavucontrol ) you can look at which applications are playing audio, and which device they are sending audio to on a per-application basis.

Because (as far as I know) firefox does not have any way to select an audio output device, if you change the output device for an application it will retain that information.... my guess is that at some point you, or someone else (or some application) has selected HDMI audio for firefox, and that has been stored.... you just need to change it back to the default device.

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Has saved me as well. Never heard of "PulseAudio Volume Control" before! – vaettchen May 11 '16 at 14:41
    
Me too! For me, the PulseAudio Volume Control revealed that "for Firefox" the volume was all the way down and this is why I could not hear anything while watching a YouTube video in Firefox. Thanks James! – Lonnie Best Dec 27 '16 at 12:05
up vote 4 down vote

Long story short:

change audio output device to something else and then back to the desired device

Full version:

I know it's bit outdated, but still. I've just run into similar problem on Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 - everything worked apart Firefox. I remember lately using my laptop with TV via HDMI and changing sound output to it. Today, in my "Sound" application, I had only one position available: "Speakers - Built-in audio". Plugging in headphones to my dock or socket on laptop's side didn't change a thing.

I managed to get it working with some workaround - I suspected that if I will be able to choose something else from the output devices list and then back to "Speakers - Built-in audio", Firefox will be updated with this info. Luckily, I had some USB speakers in the office and it did the trick - new device appeared on the list so I switched to it - sound was working. Back to "Speakers ..." - working.

It looks like some small bug (or maybe that's intentional) when there is only one device on the list, it doesn't refresh selection when clicked.

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