The iPad volume control doesn't work. I hit the Home button twice to show the Multitask bar and the volume control is missing from the Volume Control button.

This may have been solved but I thought I'd post how I resolved the same problem today on a first gen iPad.

I double-pressed the Home button to see what apps were running in multi-task mode and then closed ALL of them - immediately the sound buttons started working again (I'm guessing that one of the running APPS was somehow hogging the sound controls).

I hope that this helps someone else :-)

In my case it appeared to be a dock port failure. As some users mentioned, when it's dirty or down, the iPad thinks it's connected to some media device. I managed to work around it by plugging the power cable in and moving it slightly until sound came back. Im afraid, though, the port replacement is looming.

I had the same problem...this doesn't fix the root issue but I can get the sound back if I plug a camera connection kit into the IPAD....

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A/apple-ipad-camera-connection-kit

unplug it the sound goes away again...plugged in there's sound.

I'd rather thave the issue fixed but this lets me get by for a while.

1. If Side Switch is set to Mute, check to make sure it's not muted

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee374/Diavonex/1237fb40.jpg

2. Check the Volume buttons

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee374/Diavonex/00bf6eae.jpg

3. Double-click the Home button; swipe the Task Bar to the right. Check the Mute and Volume settings.

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee374/Diavonex/acd1c239.jpg

I recently purchased a speaker dock and I thought that was the problem. I deleted the bluetooth settings and the app for the dock and it still dosen't play music through the internal speakers. (Sound effects still work though)

The only way I can get sound playing back through its external speaker from my iPad (other than pluggin in my headphones) is if I plug in my HDMI adapter. Model number A1388. I don't have to plug in an HDMI cable nor do I have to plug it to a TV, but as soon as I plug that adapter in, all sound comes back as if it was normal. But if I take the adapter out, the iPad goes mute again - volume slider gone, volume rocker does not respond, etc.

This is pesky. It's a hardware and OS bug. If the OS team is watching this - this needs to be fixed!

Just want to say after a restore (iPhone4 8gb 5.1.1) and loosing all his contacts (bro-in-law still mad) found out that procrastiwriter writer's answer still works. found out that one of his apps took control from him and killing everything, but the phone, he was able to play pandora & music fine.

I solved it by disabling wifi, then a reboot.

After the reboot my sound worked again and I could enable wifi again and it kept on working for a while. But after some use it stopped working.

I think it has to do with my airplay device or something. When it is in a broken state and I open the airplay switch menu it lists my airport base station and "Dock Connector". I've never connected any dock to my iPad which supported audio out.

I think its more of a software issue in most cases than hardware. I tried all the above listed steps in below order:

1. Going to Setings and changing the settings of Side Switch to Lock Ration and back to Mute.

2. Fliping the side switch to Mute/Unmute

3. I tried the reset by pressing Power and Home button for 10 seconds.

4. I tried restarting it after each of above steps.

None of the above steps worked. I was about to restore it to new but that would have meant loosing a lot of data that I hadn't had a chance to back up. So I connected it to iTunes to back up and then restore to an earlier point just to insure it was not a software issue.

All I had to do was connect it to itunes and suddenly I see the Volume slider showing up and I can hear music from the iPad.

Apple should look in to it in detail and release a patch for this issue.

>>

Here is my assumption of why it happened. I rarely use headphones on my iPad, but I was traveling few days ago and carried my iPhone 5 earphones with me and used those in iPad. After use of those is when this issue popped up.

Not that this summary is of any particular help but may be doing one of the above steps or just by connecting the iPad to iTunes will work for you as well.

Btw, My Setup was as below:

IPad 3 Wifi 16GB w/h iOS 6.0

iTunes 10.7

Macbook Pro Mac OSX 10.7.5

wow, looks like this is still happening! i first ran into this issue several months ago and it fixed itself, but now its returned and it looks like nobodys found a fix for it yet! its actually my moms iPad 2 running on 5.0.1 that is having this issue. i also have an iPad 2 with the same setup but ive never run into this issue; just her.

so my run down of this problem is:

- the volume rocker doesnt work most times, other times the volume popup (gray box with megaphone symbol and volume level) will show but it will say 'sound effects' and volume will not rise or fall.

- in the multi-task bar, the volume bar has no slider to move the volume up or down.

- in Settings>General>Sounds i can move the volume slider for ringer and alerts (confirming that the speakers themselves are working fine). weird part here is if its set to change ringer/alert volume with buttons, the volume rocker will work and the bar for ringer/alerts will go up and down. if i turn that option off and i try the volume rocker the regular volume popup appears and volume goes up and down! but as soon as i leave Settings it stops working again 😟

- in any app that shows a volume bar (AVPlayer HD, for example, which is a media player) where it would normally show a volume bar, it says 'no volume available' and obviously there is no sound.

- when earbuds are plugged in, all the above issues go away and sound magically works as normal! volume bar in multi-task bar again has a slider and the volume popup will show and say 'headphones'. HOWEVER as soon as earbuds are unplugged, its back to square one 😟

heres what ive tried:

- first obvious fixes would be rebooting, powering off and manually quitting apps via multi-task bar (then rebooting and powering off)

- i do not have Airplay

- Bluetooth is off and has never been used

- the last downloaded app was some kind of free game, but it has since been deleted and the device has been reset/powered on and off/rebooted with no changes

- holding the volume button 'high' for a while, as Monozark suggested, didnt seem to do anything

- i disabled wifi and rebooted, then suddenly when i booted up it played the unlocking sound but afterwards all volume stopped working again 😟

- side switch is usually set to mute and works fine for muting/unmuting... when muted the bell popup will show with the bell crossed out and when unmuted the popup will show with the volume level for ringers/alerts but volume rocker is still unresposive and volume bar in multi-task bar will show no dot. ive tried setting this switch to orientation lock but ive seen no change.

- connecting to iTunes didnt seem to change anything. ive even tried rebooting/resetting/powering on and off while connected to iTunes and had no luck 😟 this iPad is never used with earbuds or other devices and recent use has only been to see if it changes anything.

like i said, this is the second time ive had to deal with this. the first time i took the iPad to an Apple Store and the tech was able able to see everything i was talking about. he was totally confused as to why this was happening and easily recognized that this couldnt me be manually caused by the user nor was it due to user neglect or misuse. the device he plugged into the iPad showed no device failures, crashes or any other reason for this issue to be occuring and i was like 5 seconds from a free replacement and all of a sudden it starts working again.

that was months ago, and i was so sure id seen the last of this freaky bug. im still in the middle of trying to fix it, and im going to return here regularly to see if anyones found a fix. just thought id share my experience in case it helped anyone. if i find a fix i will definitely share it here, also!

I updated my apps and my volume issue disappeared. Has remained resolved for several weeks. I'm guessing I had loaded an app which altered internal volume settings. I had tried EVERYTHING on this string. Hope this helps others.

update:

after several repeated tries at the mentioned fixes, and combinations of them, we finally decided to see if a fresh update to iOS 6 would fix it. and we also started the iPad fresh, as opposed to using a backup. we had sound for a solid hour. after a few more reinstalls, we made an appointment at the Genius Bar in our nearest Apple Store.

the results were amusing. January was when we first went in with this same problem. since then, apparently many of the 'Geniuses' have never even seen or heard of this issue. and the couple that did had only seen it occur on iPhones. after running through the same fixes already mentioned in this thread, including a fresh install of iOS 6, they deemed it possibly a water damage issue where water had caused a wire going to the speakers to corrode...

it cant be an app hogging sound because we went with fresh installs of iOS and not backups. meaning outside of default apps we didnt bother getting anything else. and my mom barely even takes her iPad out of the house so shes careful enough that water damage is a laughable thought...

anyway, this unit was also 50 days out of warranty, so we didnt qualify for a free swap. we can buy a new iPad or a refurbished one for a reduced price, but this unit is boned. with nothing to lose, my mom decided to go off the fact that she has 100% working sound when its plugged into a data/charging cable and looked in the port. a specific spot causes sound to work when flicked with a nail just right (gently, obviously) so until she gets fed up and goes for a new unit, shes stuck with using earbuds or walking around permanently connected to a data cable. the cable doesnt need to be plugged into power to make sound work so i think its just something in the port thats wonky.

If the volume control slider is missing on your screen, your iPad probably thinks that it is connected to an audio device via the dock connector, even if it isn't. If you have access to an Airport Express or Apple TV, click the AirPlay button to see where you can send your sound. If "iPad" isn't listed, and nothing is plugged into the iPad, you have a hardware problem. Happened to mine. Take it back to Apple.

Just happened to me as well. When I hit the General Settings - Sounds, it seemed to work... but it didn't with other apps like Skype. It turns out that something about iTunes Radio doesn't work well with the sound controls, even when you're not listening to it. I just changed to a regular song instead of the radio, and it immediately worked again!!

Hope it can help to solve this mystery...