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In the past two weeks there have been several times when I have tried to adjust volume and / or keyboard brightness on my Macs on both OS X Snow Leopard and Lion only to be shown an icon with a "no" symbol on it. Sometimes after waiting a bit the symbol will go away and these things start to work normal again. What does this mean, what causes it, and how can I fix it?
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The keyboard backlight “no” seems to occur when the environment is sufficiently bright that the keyboard backlight would not be visible. The volume “no” occurs when the audio output device is not the built-in analog output (i.e. doesn't have a local volume control); if you have no other audio devices then it's probably optical (digital) audio mode confusion as Damien Pollet's answer described. You can check the current output device(s) in the Sound system preferences pane. | |||
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I've noticed that when this happens, the audio ports glow red from inside. This means the mac has become confused about what is plugged in the port. They are both an electric mini-jack, and a fiber-optic audio port, and since fiber-optic is digital, I suppose volume control has to be done on the hifi equipment. Just plug/remove and gently fiddle with the jack, and usually it comes back. It really feels like the jack is sensitive to dust or how fast/straight you insert the jack, for detecting what's plugged in… Hope that helps | |||
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