Almost every "no sound" report is one of four things, and they are worth trying in this order because the first two account for most of them. None requires you to change a setting you will regret later.
Watch: Audio will not play
1 min 30 s · presented by Jason, Mandarin Temple's AI tutor
Captions are part of the picture, under Jason. The full transcript is below.
Read the transcript
- Hi, I’m Jason, Mandarin Temple’s AI tutor. If audio won’t play, here’s what to try, in the order that usually fixes it.
- Every line in a lesson’s dialogue has a play button. Select one, and the ring beside it fills once the line has played through.
- If a button seems to do nothing, click anywhere on the page first, then press play again. Browsers block sound until you do.
- Next, check your device and browser, outside this page: the volume, an iPhone’s silent switch, a muted tab, and Bluetooth headphones.
- If it worked earlier and has stopped, reload the page. A recording that failed to load is skipped until you do.
- The Sound effects switch in your account doesn’t affect lesson audio. It only covers clicks, and the cues for answers, streaks and XP.
- Playing lesson audio never uses your AI credits, so an empty balance is never the reason a lesson goes quiet.
- Still nothing? Try another browser or device. If it plays there, the first browser’s settings are the place to look.
- If none of that works, tell us the page, your browser and what you’ve tried. That turns a report into something we can fix.
Open the video guide on its own page, with its key moments
1. Tap the page once, then press play
Browsers refuse to play audio on a page you have not interacted with. It is a rule against autoplaying advertisements and it catches ordinary audio too — the button appears to do nothing, with no error.
Click or tap anywhere on the page first, then press play. If that fixes it, nothing was broken.
2. Check the obvious three
- Device volume, and the silent switch — On iPhone the physical mute switch silences media in some contexts and not others, which is exactly why it gets missed.
- The browser tab is not muted — Right-click the tab: a muted tab looks completely normal.
- Bluetooth — Audio is going to headphones in another room more often than anyone admits.
3. Reload the page
A recording that failed to download stays failed for that page load. A plain reload re-requests it, and a hard reload also bypasses a cached bad response.
Worth trying before anything more drastic, and it is the fix when a listen button worked five minutes ago and now does not.
4. If there is no listen button at all
That is not a fault. Recording coverage is not complete across every dictionary entry, and where a recording does not exist the card omits the button rather than playing something synthetic.
Lesson audio, listening passages and podcasts are complete; individual entry audio is the thing with gaps.
If none of that works
- Try another browser — It separates "this site" from "this browser profile" in one step, which no amount of setting-poking will.
- Try another device — Same logic, one level up. A phone on mobile data rules out your network too.
- Check an extension is not blocking media — Aggressive privacy extensions occasionally block audio requests. An incognito window with extensions off is the quick test.
- Tell us what you tried — Through the contact form — with the page, the browser and which of the above you have already done. That turns a report into something fixable.
Things that are not the cause
Two, because people reach for them and neither is it.
It is not your credit balance — playing recorded audio costs nothing on any plan, and an empty balance never silences a listen button. And it is not your plan — the audio on free content is the same audio.
Common questions
Nearly always the browser refusing audio on a page you have not interacted with. Tap anywhere on the page first, then press play.