[Solved] HDMI Sound Output Not Working in MacBook While Watching a Movie

You have landed at the right place if you are looking for the solution to fix HDMI sound output not working in MacBook or MacBook Air problem. It is always better and fun to watch movies on the larger TV screen than the small laptop screen. Once you downloaded the movie on the MacBook laptop, you can connect it through an HDMI cable and watch the film on TV. I usually watch movies on my Sony 55 inches TV with MacBook laptop. The advantage of HDMI is, it transfers the audio and video on a single cable with high quality.

Recently, I had an issue with the sound output to the TV; it was playing only through the laptop speaker even after connecting the HDMI cable. It was transferring the video to the TV without any problems, but not the audio. This post will show a simple way to fix the issue of HDMI sound output not working on the TV when it’s connected to a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or even the iMac.

How to Connect HDMI to MacBook to Watch Movie?

Connecting a MacBook laptop to a TV through HDMI is a simple process. When you plug-in the HDMI cable while Mac laptop is on, macOS will automatically detect the output and resolutions of the TV to adjust the screen resolution of the laptop. While making this auto adjustment, it usually changes the output of the audio to the TV also.

I thought this way…

Sometimes, when you connect the VGA/HDMI projector to a Windows laptop, it may not project through the projector (Especially when we connect the cables while the Windows OS is on). Occasionally, it fails to autodetect and send the video signals to a new video output. I thought it would be the same situation here. Therefore, I restarted the Mac laptop, but that did not help. Then I restarted the TV (It is an Android OS TV) thinking that the TV OS is not detecting the incoming audio via HDMI, and that did not help either.

The Proper Way to Fix/Change the Audio Output from MacBook Pro

1) Look for the speaker icon on the menu bar; if it is there, you can jump to step 4 now. If not, follow these steps.

Go to System Preferences and open Sound.

2) Make sure you are at the Output tab. Even after connecting the HDMI if the sound is not coming through the TV, then here you would see your laptop speaker as the selection.

You need to click on the TV model under Sound Output here. In my example, I need to click SONY TV, once I clicked, the sound started working on the TV.

3) To make things easy in future, enable the checkbox down for “Show Volume in Menu Bar” option. This will add the speaker icon on the Menu bar where you can change the sound output easily from the desktop screen itself.

4) If the speaker Icon is on the menu bar, and the sound output is not working through HDMI from MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac, right-click on the Speaker Icon. This will list the detected sound output devices by the macOS. Click on the preferable output source, in this case, it is the TV connected via HDMI.

I hope this guide would be useful in solving the HDMI sound output issue on MacBook. Usually, it should work automatically, but in case you need to fix it manually, follow the above steps.