Why there's no sound over HDMI even though the picture works on your Mac

If your TV or external display shows a perfect picture over HDMI but produces no sound at all, the video half of the connection is working and the audio half is not, because HDMI treats them as two separate signals. Five causes explain almost every case, checked here in the order they usually turn out to be it.

This is different from crackling, dropout, or one app being silent while another works. If nothing has ever come out of the TV or display's speakers over HDMI, work through the list below rather than guessing, since the fixes for each cause look nothing alike.

Is the display actually selected as the output?

Plugging in an HDMI cable and seeing a picture only sets up the video half of the connection automatically. Audio does not follow along on its own. Open the Apple menu, go to System Settings, then Sound, then Output, and check what is actually selected. If your Mac's built-in speakers or a pair of headphones are still highlighted, that is where the sound is going, not the TV.

Click the TV or display's name in that list to select it directly. This step gets skipped more than any other, because the picture working feels like confirmation that the whole connection is set up, when it has only confirmed half of it.

Check what the adapter or dock actually carries

Most modern Macs have no HDMI port, so an adapter or dock sits between the Mac and the cable: USB-C to HDMI, or a multi-port hub with HDMI built in. This is where audio most often disappears. A passive adapter can wire up the pins HDMI uses for video while leaving the audio pins unconnected, and the picture works perfectly because it never needed them.

This is especially common on cheap or older adapters built to a minimum spec rather than the full HDMI spec, and on some multi-port hubs where HDMI is one feature among several and audio support was an afterthought. There is no setting on the Mac that fixes this, because the hardware in the middle simply isn't passing the signal through.

Is the TV or display set to the wrong audio input?

If the output is selected correctly on the Mac and the adapter is genuinely carrying audio, the next place to check is the display itself, not macOS. Most TVs and many monitors have their own audio setting buried in the on-screen menu, often labelled "Speakers", "Audio Out", or "Sound", separate from the picture settings entirely.

Two things commonly go wrong here. The internal speakers can simply be switched off, usually because someone set the TV up to send sound to a soundbar or receiver instead. Or, on a display with more than one HDMI input, the audio source can be locked to a different input than the one your Mac is actually plugged into, so switching video inputs on the remote doesn't bring the sound with it. Open the TV or display's own menu and confirm both: speakers on, and pointed at the right HDMI port.

Why HDMI audio can break after your Mac wakes from sleep

HDMI negotiates a handshake with the display called EDID, which tells the Mac what video and audio formats the display supports. Waking from sleep sometimes renegotiates the video half of that handshake instantly, since the picture is what everything visibly depends on, while the audio half quietly fails to renegotiate and never recovers on its own.

Toggling the output in Sound settings usually doesn't fix this, because the Mac still thinks the audio device is there, it's the handshake itself that's stuck. The fix is a full unplug and replug of the HDMI cable, not just reselecting the output: physically disconnect it, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in. That forces a fresh handshake for both video and audio together. If it still doesn't come back, restart the Mac.

Soundbars, AV receivers, and the eARC chain

If a soundbar or AV receiver sits between the Mac and the display, using HDMI ARC or eARC to send audio back to the receiver, there's an extra link in the handshake chain, and any link can break it. A receiver that's switched off, set to the wrong input, or running older firmware can cause a picture to reach the TV with no sound reaching the receiver at all, even though nothing on the Mac's side is wrong.

The fastest way to isolate this is to plug the Mac directly into the display's HDMI input, bypassing the receiver entirely, and check whether sound comes out of the TV's own speakers. If it does, the problem is somewhere in the receiver or the ARC connection, not the Mac, the adapter, or macOS. If it still doesn't, go back to the causes above.

Where does Chorus fit in?

Chorus doesn't touch any of the causes above, and it isn't meant to. It works with outputs macOS has already detected and listed in Sound settings; it can't add an audio signal to a cable or adapter that isn't carrying one, override a TV's own input setting, or force a broken EDID handshake to renegotiate. Get the sound working over HDMI first, using the steps above.

Once it is, Chorus is what stops you reselecting the TV every single time. It's a $4.99 one-time purchase, free to trial for 30 days with every feature unlocked and no account or card details needed. Group the TV with your Mac's own speakers so both play at once, send one app's audio to the TV while everything else stays on your desk speakers, or bind a keyboard shortcut to the TV so switching to it is one keypress. Auto-Switch also means Chorus can remember the TV as your output and select it automatically the moment it reconnects, instead of you opening Sound settings by hand each time.

For the step-by-step on building a Multi-Output Device, see Apple's own guide to Audio MIDI Setup.

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