YouTube is the biggest video sharing and streaming platform in the world, with over billions of users, worldwide. These people tend to enjoy all sorts of content on the YouTube website or on their mobile applications, whether it is an android or an IOS device. Users listen to music diverging from dozens of genres, they enjoy podcasts by different content creators, who cover various topics relevant to current world affairs.
The YouTube audience tends to watch movies and even biographies uploaded on YouTube, while also giving a fair share of their time to gaming videos and even vlogs to witness the lavish lifestyles of these content creators. YouTubers put so much effort into making their videos a great experience for the viewers, they use stunning visuals and effects to indulge the people viewing their content and they make it more immersive by using dramatic sound effects and tracks, to attract the audience more and keep them watching.
By sound a person is able to experience the great wonders in life, we are able to interpret the words and feelings of other people and we further gain information according to it. In hindsight, the sound is just different vibrations, but in the complexity of it, without sound life may seem dull and not as colorful as it seems, hence we feel bad for the people who can’t hear.
The same case can be applied to YouTube, without sound that immersive and indulging experience leaves us begging for more, dies and we are not able to enjoy our time on the video streaming platform in the best possible manner. Yes in some cases people tend to mute a video, these cases might be due to privacy concerns, that other people might be listening and even a fear of judgment, that you will be judged for the content you consume.
Sometimes you just want to have a quiet experience that is solely visual. However, we can not deny the fact that most of the time we want the proper YouTube experience, with both the audio and video, but due to inconveniences and interferences which can be software or hardware-based, our content enjoying sessions are severely hindered.
There are many factors that could affect your YouTube audio, this article is going to discuss why a YouTube video might not be playing the sound uploaded with it and how to fix this issue so that you can get back to enjoying your favorite content with sound.
Possible Causes for ‘No Sound’ on YouTube
We identified and compiled a few causes of this major inconvenience, the causes can be as simple as a muted video player or as complex as faulty audio drivers.
- Your browser might be faulty, and at that specific time, it would be causing an issue with the sound.
- Your browser might be outdated.
- The device you may be using has faulty or outdated drivers.
- The sound on the YouTube player could be muted.
- The sound on your device could be muted.
- The audio mixer might need troubleshooting.
- A headphone might be connected which you are unaware of.
- The cache might need removing.
- The Adobe Flash Player might be incompatible.
- Security software might be interfering.
Possible solutions to fix the ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube
After identifying these causes, we also compiled comprehensive and step-by-step solutions to these causes.
Unmute your device
This solution is perhaps the easiest one on the list. It is possible that the device you are currently using for viewing YouTube videos is muted or that the volume is turned off. There are indicators present on both the hardware and the software of your device, which tell you if your device is on mute or not. As obvious as it may sound, sometimes our devices are muted and we are completely unaware of it, due to some rush or the extreme fatigue of modern life, such mistakes can be made.
- On most keyboards there is a mute button with a small indicator light, to tell whether the device is muted or not. You can press that button simply or with a combination of the ‘Fn’ key in order to mute or unmute your device.
- If you are on a Windows 10 device, you can access the soundbar by pressing the sound icon in the bottom right of your screen in the toolbar.
- Press the small ^ button to reveal the hidden icons.
- There you can click on the sound icon to reveal the volume slider, adjust the volume, and mute or unmute it.
Unmute the YouTube video
Sometimes when a YouTube video is not playing the audio in it, it is possible that the video was muted from the start or we ourselves muted it due to a miss click or with a tap of a button.
- When we open YouTube on our Web Browser and play our desired video. The video opens in a web player or a video player.
- At the bottom of this player, there are a number of controls and tools which the developers of YouTube have provided us with, in order to make navigation easier and simpler.
- These controls are at the bottom of the video player and they look like this:
- Here you can see the controls to play or pause the video, the option to play the next video in the queue, or even change the quality of the video and enable ‘closed captions as well.
- However, the option we are interested in is the sound option depicted by the ‘loudspeaker’ symbol.
- You can click on it to mute or unmute the video and the slider next to it allows us to control the volume of the video being played.
- The ‘M’ key can also be pressed to mute or unmute the video if you are keen on using shortcuts.
Clear the browser cache and history
After a long period of time, a lot of cache gets collected and it obstructs the performance of your browser. Along with the cache, various cookies from different websites also get collected. Even though cookies and cache are made to enhance the user experience by providing a better experience on websites, they tend to cause inconveniences if they become too large. So in order to get rid of them, we recommend you delete your browser history every once in a while to eliminate possible troubles, like the issue under discussion. Yes, the collected cache can interfere with the YouTube experience on the web browser, by creating a lot of bugs and even slowing your system down, one of these problems is also the ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube. Here is a step-by-step guide to clear your browser history.
- Access the ‘Customize and control Google Chrome’ drop-down list by pressing the three dots in the top right corner of your Chrome Tab.
- After that, you click on the ‘History’ option to access your browser history.
- Then on the left side of your screen, you will be able to spot the ‘Clear browsing data‘ option, after clicking on it a new window will open.
- On this window, you will be able to see an option to clear your web history, across multiple time ranges. We recommend you choose the ‘All time’ option to get rid of all cookies and cached files.
- You can also strike the combination of the keys ‘Ctrl + H’ on your keyboard, as a shortcut to access the chrome history quickly. You can then clear the browsing history in a similar manner as depicted above.
Update the browser you are using to access YouTube
Web Browsers receive frequent updates, in order to remove various bugs that may have found their way into the workings of a browser or to introduce new features that may enhance the user experience. Browsers are also updated to stay compatible with different websites which are accessed by the people. An outdated browser may cause interruptions in the form of bugs, which prevent you from taking the advantage of the website in use. The same is the case with YouTube. If you are using YouTube on a browser that needs an update, you might run into potential bugs and errors, which may ruin your experience. It is advised to stay up to date always, in order to avoid these inconveniences. If you use Google Chrome as your default browser, here are the steps you can use to see if your browser requires an update or not.
- You need to access the ‘More’ option by clicking the three dots on the top right of the chrome tab.
- You can then hover over the ‘Help’ option to reveal the ‘About Google Chrome’ option. Click on this option to see information about the Chrome Web Browser.
- The information about your Chrome version will be visible and an option to update it will be presented. If no option is available, or if the auto-update feature isn’t on, that means your version is up to date.
- After Chrome has been updating a ‘Relaunch’ option will appear, you can click it to relaunch Chrome’s latest version and then search YouTube to play a video, and hopefully, the issue will be resolved.
Changing or Restarting your Web Browser
Sometimes the answers we are looking for can resort to the simplest things. In this case that is to restart your browser. The Web Browser you currently use might be having issues at that specific time. If you close the browser and open it again, due to this sudden reboot there is a chance the ‘no sound’ issue would be resolved.
In case, the issue still remains even after restarting the browser or after updating, we advise you to change your browser, for the time being, just to test it out. Yes, we prefer the browser we use often as we are familiar with it, but in order to watch our video with sound, we recommend trying a different browser to the one you currently use.
If you use Google Chrome on your Windows laptop for watching YouTube videos, you can try playing the same video on the built-in browser for windows which is Microsoft Edge. Some other popular and worthy browsers include Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, etc. After you start using a different browser, which might not have similar issues, you will be able to watch your YouTube videos with sound.
Update the Audio Drivers of your device
Drivers are a set of files inside every computer system, and they are placed for the purpose of being a means of communication between a hardware and a computer’s operating system. Every device in a computer system comes with a driver and these drivers should be up to date, in order for the devices to work without malfunctioning and in a seamless manner. There are audio drivers installed on a computer system, which allow the computer to play audio for us to have a proper computer experience.
A faulty or an outdated driver may very well be the cause of this ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube. An outdated driver may not allow sound to be played at all by a computer, hence this fault is not only limited to YouTube videos, but it expands over to the ability of a computer to play sound for anything. In order for the drivers to work again, we need to make sure that the device drivers and in our case the audio drivers are up to date and are running on their latest versions. This is a brief tutorial on how to update your audio drivers on a Windows computer:
- First, you are required to access the ‘Start’ menu by clicking on the bottom left ‘Windows’ button on your screen or by simply striking the ‘Windows’ key on your keyboard.
- The next step is to type “device manager” in the Start Menu.
- Click on ‘Device Manager’ to access the various devices connected to your computer.
- Now you will be required to navigate the ‘Sound, video and game controllers’ option to further navigate your sound card. You can right-click to reveal the menu, there you can directly update your driver using the ‘Update driver’ option.
- You can also click on the ‘Properties’ option to reveal the properties of your sound card. From there you can click on the ‘Driver’ tab to see the driver details, update it, and even disable or uninstall it.
- Click on the ‘Update Driver’ option to automatically or manually update the driver. (It is recommended to use the ‘Search automatically for drivers’ option if you are not aware of what you are doing.)
- If an update is available, the driver will automatically begin to update. If there is no update you will be informed regarding it, that your driver version is up to date and the best possible version is already installed.
- You can go to YouTube and play a video and most probably your videos will be playing the sound.
Troubleshooting the ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube
If you are using Windows 10 on your computer, you might be aware of the different troubleshooting tools that come with Windows, to help you out with a lot of problems you may encounter on your computing journey. Windows 10 also comes with an audio troubleshooting tool to fix most audio-related issues that present themselves to the user. Troubleshooter is very effective in dealing with such inconveniences and here’s a tutorial on how you can access the troubleshooter and use it to fix the ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube.
- First, you will be required to access the device setting by clicking on the ‘Settings’ option in the ‘Start’ menu. This option is shown by a ‘cog’ icon.
- You will be presented with a new screen, then you will be required to click on the ‘Update and Security’ option.
- On the left side of your screen, an option will appear by the name of ‘Troubleshoot’.
- Click on the ‘Additional troubleshooters’ option.
- Among the various options, there will be a ‘Playing Audio’ option, click on it to access the ‘Run the troubleshooter’ option.
- The troubleshooter will now proceed to detect any issues with the device’s audio.
- You might be given a list of audio devices you might want to troubleshoot. After choosing one the tool will guide you further and resolve any audio issues messing with the device’s ability to play sound.
More Helpful Information
It is true that without sound, there is no fun in watching YouTube videos and it is a harsh reality that often our experiences may get ruined due to some minor flaws which tend to find their way into this complex world of computers and all its components, whether hardware or software. However, there are ways to deal with these inconveniences and these ways can be extremely simple, conventional, or traditional like restarting your computer or browser.
Even updating your browser or audio drivers can help. Sometimes a security software like antivirus can block some YouTube features. Most Security Software can be disabled for a short time and while they are disabled you can relaunch YouTube to check if the videos have sound or not. This will help you determine if your software was interfering with YouTube or is it some other issue.
Sometimes plugins and extensions hinder the experience as well you can try disabling and updating them to ensure that they are not the ones causing the issue. Moreover, it is possible that the issue is being caused due to a hardware-based issue, rather than a software or browser-based one. The speakers or any device you might be using to output the audio can be faulty or broken, and furthermore, the various ports on your computer could have malfunctioned.
We hope that after applying these comprehensive methods you will be able to fix the ‘No Sound’ issue on YouTube and you will be able to get back to your amazing content viewing session, on the great video sharing platform, that is YouTube.