Accidentally changed pulseaudio and pipewire somehow, now no sound and Youtube freezes

[codependentcorndog]

Was messing around with pulseaudio and pipewire trying to figure out why so many audio inputs were showing up in the system tray and somehow now there is no sound except for system startup sounds and the speaker in the system tray is gone. I've reinstalled pulseaudio and pipewire but that didn't work. Also randomly when I try and load a youtube video it doesn't load and just spins, which only started happening after the fact. Should I just reinstall fedora fresh or is there an easier way to fix this?


OS: Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) x86_64
Host: MS-7C91 (2.0)
Kernel: Linux 6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64
Uptime: 20 mins
Packages: 2969 (rpm), 44 (flatpak)
Shell: bash 5.2.37
Display (HDMI-A-1): 2560x1440 @ 144 Hz in 27" [External]
WM: KWin (X11)
WM Theme: Breeze
Cursor: Adwaita
Terminal: konsole 25.04.1
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (12) @ 4.21 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT [Discrete]
Memory: 5.26 GiB / 31.26 GiB (17%)
Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)

 

[codependentcorndog]

One of my first problems I'm realizing is that i thought puleaudio and pipewire were the same for some reason. Currently trying to remove pipewire due to wireplumber being an issue (saw somewhere online, did not save link) so I'm going all pulseaudio and seeing if that works.

JK pulseaudio has been replaced by pipewire, good lord my ADHD is on fire today.

 

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

I can't help with your problem but do you have a backup like Timeshift snapshot...or an image of your system created by either Foxclone or Redorescue...if you do it's an easy fix.

If not then it's something to do in case something like this happens again...I'm sure someone will be able to help you soon...good luck.

 

[909mjolnir]

try removing pulseaudio, as pipewire is a replacement for pulseaudio.
then RESTART the computer.

and when you watch YouTube videos, don't have other audio programs running (or other programs running audio).
they conflict with each other sometimes.