Audio not working with Chromium Web Browser but works with VLC

Question

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with raspbian buster desktop installed which I am using since 1 year to consume media over internet. I am using bluetooth to connect with the speakers and everything was working perfect until yesterday I did software update and the chromium web browser stopped giving audio output. However, I would play mp3 audio or video files using VLC and the audio worked perfectly.

After check with all the settings, I removed the SD card and reflashed it with the latest raspberry pi buster full desktop image that was downloaded fresh. After install, I let it do software updates and the Chromium web browser audio is still broken. And I am able to play audio and video with VLC.

Is there something with the current update that is breaking the chromium web browser? Or is there something else I am missing?

Answer 1

Glad to hear that you solved it with a fresh install of the OS. Yeah, I've had similar issues where flashing the SD card with the latest OS was the solution as well. This is why I use raspiBackup to make sure I'm always backed up (and I keep an extra SD card or two laying around just for these situations).

Answer 2

I had this problem on my Raspberry Pi 4 and fixed it by updating Chromium to the latest version. Raspbian 10 comes with version 78. After running the update I was at version 88. Audio worked fine through the browser after the update.

I ran the command:

sudo apt install chromium-browser --yes