How to Enable Mac Volume Control for HDMI or DisplayPort Audio
If you connect your Mac to an external monitor via HDMI or DisplayPort, you’ll often lose your keyboard volume controls. Depending on how you use your Mac, this can be a little annoying. Here’s a weird workaround.
When you connect a MacBook or any other Mac model to a display with HDMI or DisplayPort, macOS has good reason to believe that you want to control the volume from that external device. This makes a lot of sense if you are connecting your Mac to a TV or projector, because you probably want to control the volume with that remote. On a desktop monitor, this makes a little less sense. There is a very strange workaround to regain control of the volume from the keyboard:
- Download and install SoundFlower .
- Download and install SoundflowerBed . This is old software that hasn’t been updated for a long time, but this is the only working solution I’ve found.
- Click the SoundflowerBed icon in the menu bar and select DisplayPort or HDMI on Output.
- Click the speaker icon in the menu bar and select Soundflower. You can also go to System Preferences> Sound and select Soundflower as your output device.
That’s it, you can now control the audio volume again with the media keys on your keyboard. There is another way to do this using the Audio MIDI Setup tool, but I have not been able to get it to work as expected. Even though this incredibly old SoundflowerBed worked for me, sometimes it decides to keep my computer awake for some strange reason. However, I at least no longer need to reach 12 inches to change the volume of my speakers.