No Audio in Fullscreen Games in Windows 10 Fix

Last Updated on July 28, 2017

Whenever I run any fullscreen application, the audio from my speakers stops. This problem has been plaguing me for quite a few days.

You can fix this problem by clicking on the speaker icon on the lower right side of the start menu and selecting your preferred audio device from there. But, this is only a temporary workaround. This because as long as you don’t fix this problem fully, you’ll need to do do this, again and again, every time you run anything fullscreen.

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After digging all the Sound options and other settings from Control Panel in Windows, I was finally solved this issue. This audio loss problem is because of Nvidia graphics drivers. If you have a monitor which has speakers or an audio jack, Nvidia control panel can detect that.

By default, Nvidia control panel tries to route your PCs audio through HDMI (or DVI) to your monitor. This will happen even if you don’t have a monitor with speakers. Since your audio is now being sent over to the HDMI and not the audio jack on your motherboard, you lose sound.

Fix No Audio in Fullscreen Application in Windows 10

The simple fix for this problem is to disable digital audio in Nvidia control panel. Here’s how you can do that.

  • Right-click on your Desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel.
  • In the main window, use the left side navigation to go to the Display > Set up digital audio section.
  • By default, this option routes audio to the monitor. If you have a monitor, you’ll hear audio from the monitor’s speakers. If the monitor doesn’t have any speakers, you’ll have no audio. In the Set up digital audio screen, select Turn off audio from the drop-down menu for either HDMI or DVI (depends on the port you are using to connect your monitor).
  • Click on Apply button on the lower-right of the Nvidia control panel.

That’s it for the fix for the no audio problem in fullscreen applications problem. One problem with this solution is that sometimes during Nvidia updates, this option will be enabled again to use HDMI (or DVI) audio. So, after each update, you’ll need to make sure that you have set the audio to OFF.

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Written by Utkarsh

Utkarsh Bhatt is a certified tech expert and software engineer for a Fortune 500 Company. He was born in 1995, making him one of the oldest members of the team at EFX. Utkarsh loves solving technical issues and is always the first to jump on any problem that needs solving. When he’s not coding or debugging, he enjoys playing video games (especially Super Smash Bros.) and watching cartoons.

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