Topic: problem with headphones on laptop

Hello lovely people,

I have a problem with my headphones on my laptop. All of a sudden my headphones only give mono through the left ear, while the rest of the sound comes through the laptop. My headphones work fine on the Switch. I suspect the problem is a laptop update (maybe a windows 10 update), or there is a little bug. Any ideas?

Have you tried rotating the jack around while it’s plugged in? it might be getting a false contact.

Assuming these are wired headphones, of course.

@Eel

yes, they are wired. And yes, I rotated them. It didn't help.

If sound is only coming through the left side it usually means the jack isn't fully inserted, so that the left contact is actually connected to the right output. (And if sound is coming from the laptop it suggests it's not making the right contact for the system to detect it's inserted.) Check there's no dirt or other obstruction inside the socket.

@chardir

It is fully inserted and I did blow a couple of times into it before I inserted it.

@Henmii This has happened to me on old headphone jacks in the past. One of the contacts inside the headphone jack loses it's springiness or something, and it stops making contact with male part of the headphone plug - hence losing the right or left channel of sound. Looking online at headphone jacks, I'm not sure there's a standard for how they're constructed. Which means some could possibly be tinkered with more than others. There appears to be different construction styles, but I'm just a layperson.

A computer repair place could probably fix or replace the jack.

Sorry to hear your headphone jack failed.

@WoomyNNYes

Thanks for the answer. I heard you can try things yourself with a curved needle, maybe I'll try that someday. That, or I'll just go to a repair-shop someday. For now I just use the laptop's internal speakers.