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My headphones are the only thing I ever plug into the audio out, and yet when I plug them in, Windows 10 refuses to play any audio through them until I use the popup to tell it that they are indeed headphones. This is especially annoying when I don't have the ability to interact with the popup right away (for example, when media is in full-screen mode).

It's an old standard, so I can allow that it's probably hard or impossible for the OS to tell, but I imagine there there should be a way to configure Windows to always assume it's headphones or otherwise avoid the popup and play audio, considering that the popup is a new feature in Windows 10--or at least, one I never encountered in Vista or 7.

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  • Look for audio app in startup that adds on these bells and whistles.
    – Tony Stewart EE75
    Commented Aug 13, 2020 at 12:55
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    This isn't a Windows 10 thing. Your device is doing it, not windows 10 (probably Realtek). Realtek could have absolutely determined the number of nodes on the 3.5mm plug and not prompted you (but they didn't). HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Realtek\Audio\RtkNGUI64\General .. look in there.. you might be able to hack your way to what you want.. but probably not. You can also find settings under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Realtek
    – Señor CMasMas
    Commented Aug 13, 2020 at 15:24
  • In the past, I too disabled the startup app (as suggested above) and the headphone jack quit working entirely. I don't think that this is what you want.
    – Señor CMasMas
    Commented Aug 13, 2020 at 15:25

2 Answers 2

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Sounds like an audio driver that includes some unnecessary bloat. Check the Startup tab in Task Manager to see if anything there looks likely and disable it, or you could try using Device Manager to uninstall the driver completely and let Windows Update install the bare minimum to get sound back up and running.

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Google searches kept directing me to the same procedure involving going through Control Panel to find Realtek HD Audio Manager, which does not apply to my machine (or a few other people's machines that I saw) so here's what worked for me:

  1. Open Settings
  2. Search Notifications & Actions settings
  3. Uncheck Realtek

Now when I plug in the headphones, they work immediately.

Thanks to Señor CMasMas for pointing me in the right direction that eventually led to finding the answer.

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