sudo killall coreaudiod made it so I don't have any sound at all

Question

I ran into an issue where my volume buttons on my mac weren't able to adjust the volume of my computer. I sought a solution and someone suggested using sudo killall coreaudiod. Now I have no volume on my computer at all. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

This command will do it:

sudo launchctl stop com.apple.audio.coreaudiod && sudo launchctl start com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

Details

Martin Strouhal's answer doesn't work for OS X/macOS ≥ 10.12.4 due to removal of com.apple.audio.coreaudiod from system integrity protection's RemovableServices whitelist in /System/Library/Sandbox/com.apple.xpc.launchd.rootless.plist [1].

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist: _
   Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged

So instead of unloading the service, we instead just restart it.

Also, the latter command (sudo launchctl start com.apple.audio.coreaudiod) worked to restart the service after I had killed coreaudiod using killall coreaudiod.

Answer 2

You need to reload coreaudiod instead of killing it. This one-liner will fix broken sound without restarting your mac

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist && sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist

Answer 3

sudo killall coreaudiod should work to kill your audio drivers. It should reload itself within a fraction of a second. (verified on my mbp running 10.14 but used this on a couple of previous versions)

Answer 4

You can also use the command:

sudo launchctl kill SIGTERM system/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod

Answer 5

I'm using an M1 pro. This is very frustrating so I just created an alias in my .zshrc.

alias ar="sudo pkill coreaudiod -i"

copy paste this line and it will just append+write to your .zshrc or .bashrc

echo 'alias ar="sudo pkill coreaudiod -i"' >> ~/.zshrc; source ~/.zshrc

Or if bash:

echo 'alias ar="sudo pkill coreaudiod -i"' >> ~/.bashrc; source ~/.bashrc

Sadly Still looking for a fix.

Hope this helps someone.

Happy Coding =)

Answer 6

I prefer the more modern form using this syntax:

sudo launchctl kickstart -kp system/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod