Raspberry Pi: No Sound – HDMI | Bluetooth | Audio Jack

If your Raspberry Pi sound has suddenly stopped working through HDMI, bluetooth or audio jack after an update, this could be caused by the PulseAudio package that is generally not stable on Raspberry Pi OS (ex. Raspbian).

To fix the issue with the non-working sound on the Raspberry Pi you can try to uninstall the PulseAudio package and this short note shows how to do this.

Cool Tip: Shutdown & reboot a Raspberry Pi safely! Read more →

No Sound on Raspberry Pi

If there is no sound in your Raspberry Pi, try to remove the PulseAudio package and reboot:

$ sudo apt -y auto-remove "pulseaudio"
$ sudo reboot

After reboot you can check if there is an output on the speakers, as follows:

$ speaker-test -c2 -t wav
- sample output -
speaker-test 1.1.8
Playback device is default
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
WAV file(s)
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 480 to 32768
Period size range from 480 to 32768
Using max buffer size 32768
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 8192
was set buffer_size = 32768
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
Time per period = 2.409323
 0 - Front Left
 1 - Front Right
...

If the 🔈 Volume Control Settings do not appear on the Raspberry Pi’s task bar after reboot, follow these steps to add it:

1. Right-click on the Task Bar and select “Add / Remove Panel Items”.
2. Click on “Add” in the “Panel Preferences”.
3. Search for “Volume Control” and click on “Add”.