What Earphones Fit Into the MacBook Pro?

Plugging earphones into your MacBook Pro enables private listening. This decreases the chances of disturbances, especially in quiet areas. If you're a business owner, headphones let you listen to business podcasts and presentations, or listen to music, without being bothered or interfering with anyone else. To use the headphone port, you need a set of compatible earphones, so it's important to know what will work with your MacBook Pro.

The headphone port on the left side of your MacBook Pro will fit almost any earphone that has a 3.5 mini-phono jack. Before plugging the earphone into the headphone port, verify it has this tiny pin. You can even verify whether it will fit by simply plugging it into the port. If the pin is too large for the headphone port, you will need a compatible set of earphones.

When you plug a headphone that has a 3.5 mini-phono jack pin into the headphone port, the MacBook Pro can tell you whether the system is actually detecting your headphones when you plug them in. After plugging the headphones into the headphone port, open "System Preferences" from the Apple menu. If you open the Sound Preferences, you should see your input and output sound settings. Open the Output settings. If the system is detecting the earphones, they will be listed as the default output device.

After plugging your earphones into the headphone port and verifying that the system is detecting them, simply launch the content you want to listen to. The audio is automatically transferred to the earphones because they are have already been configured as the output device when you plugged them into the MacBook Pro. You don't need to do anything special other than use the volume controls to increase or decrease volume. Some earphones come with additional features such as surround sound settings and an equalizer. These settings are usually on the earphones itself and not the MacBook Pro. If your earphones come with additional audio enhancement features, refer to your manual for information on enabling them.

In some cases, the volume controls may not work after plugging the earphones into the headphone port. This is especially common if you were holding the volume control buttons while plugging in the earphones. If you run into such a problem, unplug the headphones and plug them back in, but this time, do not touch the volume controls until the earphones are fully plugged into the computer.