There are buttons for trying it out right away, and for making your override the boot-time default. And of course, a button for removing all overrides in case things did not go as planned.Ĭonsider Jack Retasking beta quality for now. Once installed you should launch it from the Unity Dash (or similar) by searching ‘retask’. In the application window that opens you will need to select the appropriate codec for your hardware device, followed by the pins you want to override and what you want them to override to: As of Ubuntu 13.10, HDA-Jack-Retask comes with the alsa-tools-gui package, so you shouldn’t need the PPA for Saucy and up.
It’s currently available for Ubuntu 11.10 through 13.04 through the developer’s PPA. How to Retask Your Headphone Jack in Ubuntuįirst you need to install the application. The application is designed to work primarily with HDA Intel sound cards, but you have nothing to lose (other than a few minutes) by testing it out on non-Intel sound cards. Wanting to put this right David created HDA-Jack-Retask – a small application that lets you “retask” your headphones jack with another audio function, like audio input support. The kernel exposes an interface that makes it possible to retask your jacks, but almost no one seems to use it, or even know about it. That means you can turn your Mic jack into an extra Headphone jack. Most of today’s built-in sound cards are to some degree retaskable, which means that they can be used for more than one thing. How is this possible? David explained the digital mechanics behind his tool on his blog at the time: Several years back developer David Henningsson created a small app that tries to turn a regular ol’ laptop headphone jack into a microphone input jack. One reader of this ever-diminishing jackless-niché mailed in to ask if there’s hope.
But while most modern laptops and desktops offer a dedicated microphone or combo jack, not all do. The questionable quality means that most of us reach for a dedicated “microphone headset” for your Skype calls, FPS strategy talks, Google+ Hangouts, etc. I won’t beat around the bush: the integrated microphones on most laptops deliver sound with all the acoustic pleasantness of Rebecca Black singing a cappella.