10,000 Foot Developer

I use some Skullcandy Smokin’ Buds with my work Mac running Sequoia 15 for use with meetings at times — but whenever they disconnect the audio driver reverts to one of the virtual audio drivers I had installed (and wasn’t using) for screen recordings. So, I could be in a meeting, disconnect my earbuds and could not talk or hear anything as the Mac would revert to a weird default audio driver and not the native Mac audio drive. That would require navigating to the sound settings and assigning the correct native Mac driver. This would happen with Google Meet or Zoom. Found this surprising, and hadn’t found a config to give the mac a device preference (being lazy, and assuming”it would just work”), so, thought it best just to remove the other drivers.

Once I removed these audio drivers, I was able to connect/disconnect as expected.

Here’s what I had on my machine (sans the Smokin’ Buds) — can be found in the sound settings. The two I wanted gone were the BlackHole and the VB-Cable drivers.

Also — I didn’t have any midi entries:

I couldn’t find any direct way to remove the two drivers so went to the internet.

Here’s what Google search AI gave me when I searched “osx uninstall virtual sound drivers”:

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AI Overview

To uninstall unwanted virtual sound drivers on macOS, first locate the virtual device in Audio MIDI Setup and remove it from there. If the device is not found there, navigate to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL and delete any associated files or folders. Finally, restart your Mac to ensure the changes are applied. 

Detailed Steps:

1. Locate and Remove in Audio MIDI Setup:
   • Open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications > Utilities).
   • Go to Window > Show Audio Devices.
   • If your virtual device is listed, select it and click the minus (-) icon at the bottom left. 
2. Delete Files/Folders in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL:
   • Open Finder and go to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL.
   • Delete any files or folders related to the virtual sound driver. 
   • For example, if it’s a virtual device from RØDE, you might delete files or folders named something like “RØDE Virtual”. 
3. Remove from System Library:
   • Use Command-Shift-G and paste /Library/Audio to access the system-wide library.
   • Search for any .plist files or other files related to the virtual device and delete them. 
4. Check Application Support:
   • Go to the Application Support folder (e.g., /Users/yourusername/Library/Application Support).
   • Look for any files or folders related to the virtual sound driver and delete them. 
5. Restart:
   • Restart your Mac to ensure all changes are applied and the virtual sound driver is removed. 

Generative AI is experimental.

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I went through all the steps — but for me, the steps that made the difference were #’s 2 and 5:

• Delete Files/Folders in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL

• Restart

Never been a fan of this kind of “delete the driver files” thing in any OS but it worked. Always restart — always.

With those two drivers gone, I can connect/disconnect the earbuds in a meeting session with little trouble.