Headphone jack not working

To pmstrain - Thanks!

I tried what you said and when I plugged in my speakers I found the volume was set to mute. It happend, for some reason, right after I set up my bluetooth headphones. Everything is working now.

Thought I'd let folks now what worked for me.

I reset the PRAM and that did the trick.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379

Good luck!

Ok, everybody is wrong according to my computer. Plug the headphones in. The computer knows its the headphone jack. Go to Preferences - sound output

My volume was down on the headphone output so I turned it up. Works the way it did before. Thank God!

thanks for the help i was having this isue and i just restarted it and it worked.

Just wanna say to Earthgirl that I updated to Snow Leopard (yeah, I'm wayyy behind) and my headphones jack stopped working shortly after. I fixed the problem the same way you did. Somehow my audio output settings magically changed themselves to have the volume turned all the way down and to be on mute in the middle of listening to a song via headphones. So thanks for posting that cuz you solved my problem!

I know this may be a bit late, but I was having the same problem. I felt really dumb after I found out how to fix it. My headphones weren't working because it was set to mute when I had my headphones in. All I had to do was turn up the volume when I put in the headphones.

I still have this issue and the only way I've been able to get it to "work" is if you want earphone support, you have to plug your earphones in, then restart. Logging off and back on doesn't work, it has to be a full restart. Then, once it's been restarted, the sound will work through the earphones. You can then unplug your earphones and the sound will be redirected back to the speakers and vice verca. If my mac ever starts without the earphones plugged in, I can't get sound to go through the earphones. Hope this helps someone.

Yes, the PRAM trick also worked for me. I feared that the headphone jack had gone kaput, but thanks to the kind folks on the forum it is all hunky dory.

This prob suddenly appeared for me, and I fixed it, but just have to add to the outrage here about how incredibly STUPID this is, and how dissapointed I am with Apple, that would release software that is so complex at the user-interface level that Apple itself doesn't understand it. Dissapointed, of course, because Apple is SUPPOSED to be the "user-interface" guys who make it SIMPLE. Ah well.

iMilletos's video pointed me in the right direction. Thanks! The interface is a language I cannot read, but the captions are English and I was able to follow it sort of.

This is what I *think* happens:

Everything can work fine for months, and you can use your computer normally, plugging in headphone/speakers when you feel like it, yadda yadda, and then, for some complex reason, things get "out of whack," to use a technical phrase.

When/if this happens, *with the headphones/speakers plugged in* you have to select "headphones" in the Sound prefs panel as described in the video and a few places on this thread. The deal is, though, you will not see the option to select headphones unless the headphones are plugged in. Normally, when you troubleshoot this kind of stuff, you unplug the headphones, try a bunch of stuff, then plug them back in. I'm pretty sure that there is the problem, and it will never work, no matter what you do. Gotta have the headphones plugged in. However, WHEN you plug them in might be a factor as well.

I'm not sure I fully figured this out, but I think this is an important piece of this unnecessarily complex puzzle.

Thank You earthgirl2...Your fix in system Pref's just helped me...Even 14 months later!!

Same here. Headphones just stop working and then I have to reset my macbook pro in order to make them work again.

what if the headphone jack is playing louder audio on the right side than the left? i tried 2 different sets of headphones and still the same thing.

Its probably the balace setting in the itunes mixer. Or sound preferences in the apple dropdown.

thank you. its been that way for some time. i figured the 3.5 mm jack was damaged

Resetting the PRAM solved it for me. Thanks!