how to solve greyed out volume control

The steps suggested by Thicot01 solved my problem(no reboot required). Thanks a lot.

This is weird, but I used an Apple audio video cable and plugged it into the TV. I then unplugged it and I had my sound back. It was simple but it did the trick when nothing else would.

For me the solution was more simple.

>>Sound

>>Output

>>Click on Internal Speakers instead of Multi-Output device

Hey guys,

I had no output from speakers, or headphones. And the System Preferences - Volume was greyed out.

I tried everything up to including a PRAM reset and nothing worked.

Took it to the company tech and after awhile he figured out what was wrong.

The inner head phone jack was dirty. He cleaned it with a qtip or a special computer cleaning device. Apparently there’s a internal sensor in the jack that will prevent the internal output from functioning if it’s to dirty. It’s not like a dropped the computer in a dirty pond. I would have never figured that out.

Anyways, that’s what fixed it for me with the same symptoms as listed.

🙂

THIS IS THE WINNING SOLUTION. TRIED ALL THE OTHERS ABOVE. DID THE TRICK. ETERNAL THANKS, HOMIE.

I have never experienced this issue until recently upgrading to OS X 10.10 "Yellowstone".

A very excellent solution!

Thicot01's solution worked perfectly in this release. If you have not discovered already, where he wrote "console" you need to open "terminal."

I had not experienced this issue until recently upgrading to OS X 10.10 "Yellowstone." It happened a number of times within the first week.

However, Thicot01's very elegant solution worked perfectly.

NOTE: If you have not discovered already, where he wrote "open console" you need to open "terminal."

Happy listening!

Repairing Permissions in Disk Utility solved this for me, when none of the other suggestions in this forum worked.

This works for me, thanks.

amazing! it fixed my problem as well

Thanks a lot! Quick and durable solution. Congrats.

forget everything

Just try this steps

1. Plug your headphones back in.
2. Play a bit of sound through them (e.g., a song), then stop the sound.
3. Make sure Preferences is quit.
4. Launch Preferences and open the Sound pane.
5. While the Sound pane is open and set to Headphones, pull out the headphone plug from the jack.
6. It will reset itself to "Internal Speakers" and you are good to go.

That's it

Regards

Muddassir

Had the same problem. Read through every post in this thread to date and tried all the solutions multiple times with no success. Finally, something someone said pointed me in the right direction. I am running Yosemite on my mac book air, btw, never heard of Yellowstone. My problem was that I have two external monitors connected. When they were unplugged, the Mac internal speakers and the headphone jack worked fine. When the monitors are connected the sound output device was to my Samsung Syncmaster monitor and the volume control was greyed out at max volume. I then found I could control the syncmaster's volume using it's volume control. However, having it greyed out on the mac book air I believe is a recent development as I don't recall having this issue prior to installing Yosemite. I've had this monitor arrangement since OS Mountain Lion days. I suspect Yosemite doesn't support my old syncmaster monitor and Samsung doesn't have a Mac driver for it so it looks like time for a new monitor if I want volume control from the Mac.

Bottom line is if you are using an old external monitor you may be S.O.L.

Running Yosemite 10.10.2 when this happened to me ... after trying every other solution in this thread, THIS ONE WORKED :-))) Thanks

Doing the headphone thing worked for me. It's amazing how sometimes, it's the simplest action that solves the issue. Thanks for you tip!