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Beemo

Member

Registered: 2024-12-20

Posts: 65

[Solved] Use speaker when headphone is plugged in?

I'd like to be able to switch to my laptop's built-in speaker when a headphone is plugged in. However, what happens is that the speaker option disappears from the audio switcher (not in Settings app either).

❯ pactl list sinks
Sink #59
        State: RUNNING
        Ports:
                analog-output-speaker: Speakers (type: Speaker, priority: 10000, availability group: Legacy 3, not available)
                analog-output-headphones: Headphones (type: Headphones, priority: 9900, availability group: Legacy 2, availability unknown)
        Active Port: analog-output-headphones

I tried pwvucontrol to switch the port but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

❯ flatpak run com.saivert.pwvucontrol
C 07:47:19.102921        pwvucontrol src/ui/route_dropdown.rs:188:: Setting route to 0

What's the reason for the behavior (Not appearing in GNOME / "not available")? And is it actually doable (to switch port)?

The laptop is Framework 13 and someone else had both ports available on Windows.

Last edited by Beemo (2025-12-12 09:42:07)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,960

Re: [Solved] Use speaker when headphone is plugged in?

The simplest check is to verify in e.g. alsamixer that Auto-Mute is disabled. If you have that and it still doesn't work it's likely pipewire profile routing disabling the speaker jack, you could relatively easily test that relation by e.g. testing the pro profile

If you want to fully seperate the two you need to enable the indep_hp=true hint in hdajackretask from alsa-tools (...or configure the corresponding override file yourself, see https://dri.freedesktop.org/docs/drm/so … nt-strings

Beemo

Member

Registered: 2024-12-20

Posts: 65

Re: [Solved] Use speaker when headphone is plugged in?

In alsamixer, it turns out the speaker is muted, but auto-mute is disabled. I can un-mute the speaker, though muting the headphone mutes both, and the speaker option still doesn't show up in GNOME's GUI.
Switching to the "Pro Audio" profile creates a new option in the GUI that allows alsamixer to work correctly.
However I still prefer to find out why it doesn't work with a pipewire switcher instead of using alsa...

The reason pwvucontrol doesn't work is because the speaker port option is actually hidden (likely has something to do with the "not available") and I chose "microphone" accidentally instead.

Last edited by Beemo (2025-12-12 02:15:59)

Beemo

Member

Registered: 2024-12-20

Posts: 65

Re: [Solved] Use speaker when headphone is plugged in?

Our speaker configuration is such that plugging in headphones makes the speaker port unavailable. This is a hack to allow the speaker port to have higher priority than headphones, to ensure that speakers are selected when headphones don't support jack detection (it's a bad idea to default to headphones if we don't know if they are plugged in). When headphones do support jack detection, then we want to switch to headphones when they are plugged in, and setting the speaker port unavailable achieves this. Ideally headphones would have higher priority than speakers when headphones have jack detection support, but it's not currently possible to set different priorities depending on jack detection support.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaud … ssues/1028

Welp that's why...