Volume keys not working - iMac and Sequoia 15.5

Question

Volume keys not working - iMac and Sequoia 15.5

The F10, F11, and F12 keys on my iMac's keyboard have stopped working (again).

Long story short, I had an issue with searchpartyd using 100% of a cpu endlessly and had to erase the disk, reinstall the OS, and than have TM restore everything from a known/good backup.

Those function keys worked then. Some of the apps TM restored were 'damaged' and I had to reinstall them - Pro Tools, Thunderbird, Adobe creative cloud.

I don't know if it's related but now those function keys just give me a small round circle with a slash thru it.

I walked the list of keyboard shortcuts and had it reset the default values if it gave me that option. I also made sure the F1 and F2 functionality was turned off. Those keys are still not working.

Posted on Jul 9, 2025 11:56 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

JohnnyRichGuitar Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 9, 2025 9:08 PM in response to shashwath210

Thanks, but see the comment above. If I chose my external Motu M4 audio device for input/output the volume keys wouldn't work but if I picked the iMac's speaker and microphone the keys functioned.

Download and reinstalling the driver for the M4 did the trick.

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Answer 2

Jul 9, 2025 5:31 PM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

False alarm of sorts - the volume function keys weren't working when I was using a Motu M4 as my audio interface; when I set the audio i/o to the internal devices, everything was fine.

This feels a little odd as 99.9% of the time the M4 is the audio device and it has always worked fine. For a number of years now ...

I reinstalled Motu's M4 drivers and now everything is working right. This suggests the TM machine restore didn't completely 'get all' of the M4 driver software. Similar to the restore saying Pro Tools and Thunderbird were damaged when they'd been restored from a backup I *know* was ok. Odd ...

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Answer 3

Jul 9, 2025 8:23 PM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

Try to see if you have a virtual audio device on your mac. Library > Audio › Plug-Ins › HAL should have all the external audio devices.

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Answer 4

Jul 10, 2025 8:01 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

Just a quick note or two:

a) if you had problems, and erased the disk, then migrating everything from the backup just got you back to where you'd started. You should have migrated ONLY the user accounts, and then installed any apps from their sites or the app store.

b) nowadays there is NO NEED to completely erase the drive: instead, you can use the "erase and transfer" area of system settings to "erase content and settings", leaving the OS proper intact. The OS is mounted on a separate, sealed and read only volume, so it cannot be modified. Thus erasing is unnecessary.

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Answer 5

Jul 10, 2025 11:43 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks Luis - erasing the disk was the only way to 'fix' the problem with searchpartyd running 100%. I spent 2-3 hours on the phone with a 'senior' Apple tech person and, in the end, she threw up her hands and said that was the only thing left to do. I'd reinstalled the OS a couple of times and the searchpartyd problem never went away.

Yes, I was expecting a TM restore of everything to have just put me back to where I had been, along with searchpartyd running 100%, but now searchpartyd is behaving itself. Go figure.

I most definitely did *not* want to go thru the drill of reinstalling Pro Tools and the gazillion plugins I have from a slew of vendors. I had effectively tried that in one of the many iterations that I went thru with Apple support before giving up and wiping everything clean and restoring to a 'good' date; in all those times Pro Tools either couldn't find all the plugins or would crash on startup. That was the show-stopper.

Ps, the Apple tech never suggested erasing the content you see in system settings.

Pps, some of the apps and drivers TM restored were either 'damaged' or screwed up - Pro Tools, Thunderbird, the audio drivers for Motu's M4 interface. Odd. Fwiw, other than buying new licenses for PT plugins, I keep everything up to date vigorously.

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Answer 6

Jul 10, 2025 7:49 AM in response to JohnnyRichGuitar

No problem; I am just getting started on Apple Community

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