Ugh - Monterey Audio Output Issues, MBA M1

Tech Support
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MBA M1
macOS 12.0.1

:wave: Hi all,

Since Monterey, my audio output has gotten unreliable. Either my Mac speakers will disappear from my Sound Pref Pane and/or my wired headphones — while in use, say on a Zoom call — will stop functioning.

I can sometimes plug my headphones out/in to reset their use, but rebooting seems to be the only solution I’ve found to bring the speakers back.

I’ve found this link on discussions.apple.com but wasn’t able to find the .plist file they were talking about. It also strikes me as something

Do we think that this is a ‘wait until the next update because surely they found it in Cupertino’ kind of thing? Or does anyone recommend anything more proactive?

Many thanks!

Monterey Audio Output Issues
Monterey Audio Output Issues1600×1294 127 KB

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Did you try searching for those two plist files, eg with Spotlight or a Terminal command?

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Thanks for the reply @jec0047 — I’ve not been able to find them via Spotlight (or manually). Maybe I missed something, but I’ll look up how to do it via Terminal.

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I’m still on Big Sur, but I don’t have those files either. If you want to try searching in Terminal, the command would be:

find ~/Library \( -name com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist -o -name com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist \) -ls

This is one command, on one line, then press the return key. Note the space character after “\(” and before “\)”.

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I’m not at a Mac, but those could be in /Library, not ~/Library

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Yes, that’s where they are, thanks @ismh.

So, @JOSE, your Terminal command is:

find /Library \( -name com.apple.audio.DeviceSettings.plist -o -name com.apple.audio.SystemSettings.plist \) -ls

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Thanks both @jec0047 & @ismh — I’ll report back!