[Daniel Bayer]

What on earth?

I was using my headphones on my MacBook Pro last night and when I unplugged them a fairly bright red light was coming out of the hole.

I looked inside and all be if it was not a red LED.

I then plugged the headphones back in and it was gone when I unplugged them.

What in the heck was that all about?

[Daniel Bayer]

In shining a light in the audio in and headphone jacks, I can easily see a tiny LED in there.

Check it out.

What are those for?

[mduell]

It doubles as a headphone jack and an optical audio port. Sometimes it may activate by accident.

[susanandmarkw]

I have this problem--of the digital out being stuck "on"--and my internal audio speakers no longer work because of it. Though I've restarted, safe restarted, run OnyX, etc. the audio won't work and the red light is on inside my headphone jack. The sound prefernce indicates the digital audio out jack is is my only available output device. If I put headphones in, they'll work, but if I unplug them, I've got no sound. It's driving me crazy and I can't find anything else about this anywhere else online (Google search).

[Daniel Bayer]

I now have the problem of it staying on. I have to say that between the all the issues I have had, this is the very least satisified I have ever been with an Apple product.

[markskessler]

Has anyone had this issue resolved. I'm having exactly the same problem with the headphone output jack emitting a red light. If I plugin my headphones or mini plug to RCAs i can still output sound but cannot use mhy internal speakers. Help. Thanks - Mark

[Zeeb]

Originally Posted by markskessler

Has anyone had this issue resolved. I'm having exactly the same problem with the headphone output jack emitting a red light. If I plugin my headphones or mini plug to RCAs i can still output sound but cannot use mhy internal speakers. Help. Thanks - Mark

I only had this problem when I was running windows on my mac. In windows, I went into the settings for the audio card and turned off the optical audio out port. It still worked at a headphone jack afterward but the light went out.

If you're in OSX and this is happening, I'm afraid I don't know.

[amazing]

As I recall, there was some mention of the red LED getting stuck, on macintouch.com (and possibly even in threads here.) Some people resolved it by repeatedly plugging and unplugging their headphones. Maybe inserting a $20 digital toslink cable would turn it off when you take it out? Others used a toothpick (being careful not to break it) to deactivate some small switch inside. You'll have to do a search...(I did find it mentioned at macintouch.com, which also mentioned that when the red LED is on, the speakers don't work.)

[VickyMR313]

hey so i had the same problem and i plugged in a different 1/8" cable than the headphones that accidentally activated it and it worked so just try so other cables and hopefully that will work for the rest of you.