Arch Linux

gnimagv2

Member

Registered: 2025-05-31

Posts: 1

Pipewire unable to detect headphone jack on KDE

Hello! Recently after using distros like Fedora and Mint for awhile, I wanted to switch to Arch for the Supreme™ Linux experience.

Unfortunately, I've ran into an issue. My desktop environment of choice, KDE Plasma using Pipewire are unable to detect my headphone jack, which had worked flawlessly for years prior.

Naturally, looking on this fourm and others I've tried several things. Firstly, I tried reinstalling Pipewire alongside all of it's services (pipewire-pulse, etc). This led nowhere and I was still stuck at square one. Then, thinking maybe Pipewire is just broken, I begun the process of uninstalling it and replacing it with Pulseaudio.

Of course, after hearing that Pulseaudio just sucks compared to Pipewire, I then switched BACK to Pipewire and uninstalled Pulseaudio (yes, it's fully uninstalled, I made sure)

But, that leaves me back here with my headphone jack still not functioning. Mind you, my HDMI output works fine, however both neither the built in speakers nor the headphone jack (I forgot to mention the speakers not working, but it's not as important compared to the headphones, and I'm like 90% sure it's the same problem for both). Granted, this is what I get for using a modern Alienware laptop (Alienware R15), but still I would appreciate any assistance from those who actually know what they're doing.

I didn't know whether or not this belongs elsewhere, but I am new to Arch, so I thought to post it here anyway.

Thanks in advance!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,156

Re: Pipewire unable to detect headphone jack on KDE

Lets see how it looks like on the lower layers,

aplay -l
amixer -c0 #or whatever index your speakers are on in aplay -l
sudo dmesg | grep -E 'snd|sof'
pactl list cards
pactl list sinks

post that in [code][/code] tags.

If it used to work in fedora and mint, chances are the only relevant difference is going to be that you didn't yet install sof-firmware.

Last edited by V1del (2025-06-02 12:47:16)