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I can’t hear anything on my computer, why not?

There are a few reasons why you might not be able to hear sound on your computer.

Ensure the sound is turned on in the activity

Inside of an activity, click on the sound icon and select  Sound on in the drop-down menu.

sound is muted in activity

For languages that use their own scripts such as Chinese or Japanese, tasks can be set up so that the sound is disabled in Reading Mode. This is to encourage students to not rely on audio prompts when in this learning mode. This can be seen in the settings of the task but there are no visual cues of this being the case from the student end.

Ensure the computer isn’t muted

For a Windows computer, you can access your sound settings by clicking on the speaker icon located in the bottom, right-hand corner of your screen on your taskbar. If there is a cross next to the speaker, this will mean that your computer is muted.

sound is muted on windows

For Apple computers, you can access your sound settings by clicking on the Control Centre in your menu bar. If the speaker icon looks the same as the one pictured below, your Mac is muted.

sound is muted on mac

Ensure the tab isn’t muted

In some cases, pages can be auto-muted in Google Chrome which can mute the audio in our lessons. If your students are having this issue, it is easily identifiable and simple to fix. A small speaker icon with a line crossed through it will appear in the tab containing the lesson for the duration that the audio is playing for. This means that if the audio has finished playing or is paused, the icon will not appear on the tab.

tab is muted

To resolve this, right-click on the tab and select Unmute site from the drop-down menu that appears.

unmute tab

Ensure headphones or speakers are working

If you are using headphones or external speakers, you may not be able to hear sound if they are broken, or not configured properly.