Some weeks ago, I started having problems with sound in web browsers. Since I only occasionally watch YouTube videos or do other things with video in web browsers, I’m not really sure when it started. The symptom, though, is that videos with sound would remain silent.
I usually use Firefox, so I thought I’d try Chromium since it’s a totally different code base. Same problem. But wait… LibreWolf and Tor Browser, both based on Firefox, worked fine. I tried all the usual: turning it off and on again, updating, checking system-level audio configuration…
An online search found many cases, going back years, of the same problems, but none of the solutions applied.
I stopped putting much effort into it when Fedora 43 was released, because I figured that whatever was screwed up was likely to be fixed by the system update. I didn’t want to apply the system update, though, because my internal storage was low. I had a new 2 TB SSD, but migration was going to be a bit tricky (I didn’t have an external enclosure) so I waited. Then, when I finally upgraded my storage, our internet was down and I was using a low-speed satellite backup. I didn’t want to do a system upgrade until the internet was fast and stable.
The internet got fixed this morning. I upgraded to Fedora 43. Still no video sound. Sigh.
I searched again and found more (and more recent) reports of the same problem. While none of the solutions applied to me directly, some mentioned wireplumber which I had never heard of. Searching for wireplumber files in my home directory, I found the folder ~/.local/state/wireplumber. Since “local state” files seemed transitory, and my next step was reinstalling Firefox anyway, I decided just to delete them. Yes, I was feeling reckless. So I quit Firefox, did rm -rf .local/state/wireplumber and followed it with systemctl --user restart wireplumber for good measure.
Sound is back.
—2p