How To Fix Desktop Audio Not Working OBS Studio

When recording from OBS studio, if the desktop audio section does not respond to any audio, you will not hear the sounds from the computer in your recordings. To know if OBS picks up any audio from the computer, check the Audio Mixer. Under Desktop Audio, you can see a signal/sign that indicates it is getting audio from the computer. 

Now, let’s discuss a few causes and solutions to resolve the desktop audio problem in OBS.

How to Fix Desktop Audio Not Working in OBS

You can try the following solutions to fix the issue with desktop audio in OBS.

Desktop Audio Properties

The first thing you can do is check the volume mixer settings in sound settings. From the Volume Mixer setting, you can easily control the volume level of all running applications. If this setting is low or muted for OBS, it will not record any sound from the computer.

To adjust the OBS sound from the Volume mixer:

1. Right-click the speaker icon on the bottom right of the screen.
2. Click on Open volume mixer. The Volume Mixer dialog box will pop up, displaying all the sound levels for each application running in the background.
3. Make sure that the OBS Volume is 100 and not muted. 
   

If the volume is 100 and muted, OBS will not pick any audio from the desktop.

Push-to-Talk / Push-to-Mute Settings

Push-to-Talk / Push-to-Mute in OBS allows the user to start or stop recording the audio with the press of a button. The audio includes both desktop and microphone audio. 

If we enable Push-to-talk, the OBS records the computer audio only when you press and hold a specific button. The Push-to-mute also works the same way, but you can just press a button to mute or unmute desktop audio.

To enable or disable push-to-talk/push-to-mute, you can follow these steps.

1. Open OBS and click on File on the top-left of the OBS dialog box.
2. A dropdown menu will open. Then click on Settings.
   
3. On the left section, select Audio.
4. Now, under Hotkeys, on the right section, disable the Desktop audio Push-to-talk or Push-to-mute.
   

There is also a hotkey to mute or unmute desktop audio. By accident, if you press the mute button, it won’t unmute unless you press a specific button.

Follow these steps if you want to set hotkeys for push-to-talk, push-to-mute, mute, or unmute.

1. Go to Files>Settings. 
2. On the left section, select Hotkeys.
3. Scroll down to Desktop Audio. Here, you can select any keys that you want to mute, unmute, push-to-talk, or push-to-mute the desktop audio.
   

Global Audio Devices

Global Audio Devices setting in OBS lets you choose the device from which it records audio. For example, if we connect the computer to both headphones and a speaker, you can select any of these, and the OBS will record the audio from the selected one.

If the audio comes from the headphones and the desktop audio is set to Speaker, the OBS will not detect any computer audio. To change these settings, follow these steps.

1. Click on File on the top-left of the OBS dialog box.
2. Go to Settings>Audio.
3. On the right side, under Global Audio Devices. Set the Desktop Audio to the default or select a device from which you hear the computer audio.
   

If you have computer audio coming from multiple output devices, you can also set the Device Audio 2 to record the computer audio from these devices.

While you are on this setting, make sure that the Channel, under General, is set to Stereo.

Enable Output Device

If the output device is disabled from sound settings, you will not get any audio from the computer and the OBS. However, if you have just muted the speaker from the taskbar, the OBS will still record sound, and your recordings will have desktop audio.

Some computers will hide the disabled devices. To display the disabled audio output device, follow these steps.

1. Go to Control Panel and click on Sound.
2. Go to the Playback tab.
3. A Sound dialog box will pop up, displaying all the audio output devices.
4. To enable, right-click on the lightly colored audio device and select Enable.
   

Any disabled devices will be light-colored. If you cannot see any disabled device on the list of audio devices, right-click inside the white section of the dialog box and click on Show disabled devices. You can now see any disabled devices in the dialog box.

If you hear any audio from the computer, OBS will also detect them.

Desktop Audio Muted

Sometimes, when you open OBS, the Desktop Audio section gets muted by default. If this section is muted, the OBS will not record any audio from the computer.

To check if the desktop audio settings, follow these steps.

1. Open OBS and check for the Audio Mixer section on the bottom part of the OBS dialog box.
2. Under Desktop Audio, check for the speaker icon. If the speaker is muted, the icon displayed is a red speaker with a cross mark. 
   
3. To unmute, click on the speaker icon.

On the right side of the speaker icon, you can see a volume slider that controls the desktop audio volume in OBS. The OBS will not pick up any desktop sound if this volume is low.

Rollback / Update Windows

Sometimes, a windows update may cause issues with recording software like OBS. If the Desktop Audio stopped recording after the Windows update, you could roll back the Windows to the previous version with no issue. To revert an update, you can follow these steps.

Click on the Start menu and go to Settings > Windows Update  (Update and Security for Windows 10)> Update history. Scroll down to Uninstall updates and right-click the latest Windows update. Click Uninstall. After the uninstall is complete, restart your computer.

The desktop audio may also not work if the Windows is outdated. Try updating the windows to the latest version to fix the OBS desktop audio issue.

To update your computer, follow these steps:

Go to Windows Update and click on Check for updates (or Install updates). If you have any pending updates, the OS will automatically download them. After the download is complete, restart the computer to install the updates.

Update Audio Driver

If the audio driver is not up-to-date, the OS cannot communicate with the audio output device. Hence, OBS will not detect any audio. To update your audio driver, follow these steps.

Click on the Start menu and search for Device Manager. Expand Sound, video, and game controller, then right-click the audio driver and Update.

Toggle the Audio Source

Due to an unknown glitch in the OBS, the OBS will not get any desktop audio even if everything works fine. 

You can switch the Desktop Audio (in Global Audio) from Default to other output sources and back to default to fix this. It is a weird solution, but it re-calibrates the audio.

Reinstall OBS

If none of the above solutions work, then the issue is probably with the files that run the OBS. Some files may get corrupted while installing OBS studio. Uninstalling and reinstalling the application can solve the problem with corrupted files.

To uninstall OBS, Go to Control Panel > Program and Features. Right-click on OBS studios and click Uninstall.

To download OBS studio, you can go to the official OBS website. Select your OS and click on Download Installer. After the download is complete, run the executable (.exe) file to install.