WebRTC: I can't hear the other person

Hosted Voice

One-way audio on the web phone - troubleshooting steps

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This guide is for you if you make or receive calls through the web phone (the phone that runs in a Chrome or Edge tab, rather than a desk handset) and you're hitting one of these:

You place a call, it connects, but you hear complete silence - no ringing, no voice.
The other person can hear you perfectly, but you can't hear them.
Calls look normal on screen - the timer runs, the call shows as connected - but there's no sound.
Everything worked yesterday and nothing was changed.

If nobody can hear anybody, or the audio is choppy and breaking up rather than absent, that's a different fault - skip to When to contact support and tell us which of those you're seeing.

Before you start

Do these steps on the affected computer, in the order below.
Stop as soon as calls work, and tell us which step fixed it.
Note the time you run each test. This lets us match your test against our system records, and it makes a real difference to how fast we can resolve things.

Why this happens

A phone call has two separate one-way streams of sound: your voice going out, and their voice coming back. They travel independently. It's completely normal for one to work perfectly while the other is broken - which is why the other person can hear you fine while you're sitting in silence, and why the call looks healthy on screen.

When sound is missing in one direction only, it's almost never your account or the phone system itself. It's nearly always one of two things:

Your computer is playing the sound somewhere you're not listening.
The sound never reaches your computer, because something on your network is dropping it.

Step 1 tells us which of those two you're dealing with, which is why it comes first.

Step 1: Echo test — the most important step

The echo test plays audio to you directly from the phone system. No outside phone line is involved, so it's the cleanest possible test of your own audio.

In the web phone, dial *56 and press call.
Talk for a few seconds. You should hear your own voice repeated back to you.
While the call is running, look at the Chrome tab at the top of your screen — the "Phone System" tab.
Does a small speaker icon appear on that tab?

Tell us two things: could you hear yourself, and did the speaker icon appear?

That single answer tells us where the problem is:

3 of 3 rows


Yes	Yes	Your audio is working. The problem is with specific calls or numbers - note which ones fail and contact us.	Contact support
Yes	No	Sound is reaching your browser, but your computer is playing it somewhere you can't hear.	Steps 2–5
No	No	Sound is not reaching your browser at all. This is a network problem, not a settings problem.	Steps 6–8

The speaker icon is the key. It appears whenever a tab is actually producing sound. If it's there and you hear nothing, the audio arrived and got lost inside your computer. If it never appears, the audio never made it to you.

Step 2: Check the web phone's speaker setting

The phone has its own speaker selection, separate from Windows. It's very common for Windows to be set correctly while the phone is still pointing at "Default" - which may not be the device you're actually wearing.

At the top right of the web phone, click the ⋮ (three dots) → Settings → Device selection.
Find "Choose speaker for conversation".
Change it from Default to your actual headset or speakers, selected by name.
Click Save, then refresh the page and make a test call.

Tell us: what options were listed, and which one was selected?

While you're on that screen, check the microphone and ringtone settings too - the ringtone device is often a separate setting from the conversation speaker, so it's possible to hear ringing but nothing once the call connects.

If your headset doesn't appear in the list at all, the browser can't see it. Plug it in (or reconnect it), then refresh the phone page - the browser only looks for audio devices when the page loads. Then check the list again.

Step 3: Windows sound settings - the most common cause

Windows keeps two separate audio settings: one for normal sound, and a different one for phone calls. YouTube uses the first. The web phone uses the second. If that second one is pointing at the wrong device, YouTube and music will play perfectly while calls are completely silent.

This catches almost everyone, because the obvious setting looks correct.

Right-click the speaker icon in the bottom-right of your screen → Sound settings → More sound settings.
On the Playback tab, find the speakers or headset you actually use.
Right-click it → Set as Default Device.
Right-click it again → Set as Default Communications Device. ← this second one is usually the problem
Close Chrome completely (all windows), reopen it, log back into the phone and test.

Step 5 matters - Chrome needs a full restart to pick up the change, not just a page refresh.

While you're on that screen, it's worth confirming your headset isn't listed as Disabled. Right-click in the empty space and tick Show Disabled Devices to check.

Step 4: Headset check

Wireless/Bluetooth headset: is it charged, and is it connected to the computer rather than to your mobile? Bluetooth headsets will happily pair to a phone sitting in your bag and leave the computer with nothing.
Wired headset: unplug it and plug it back in, then refresh the phone page.
Check the headset's own controls - many have a physical volume dial and a mute button that don't show up anywhere on screen.

If you're chasing a stubborn fault, try a wired headset. It removes a whole category of Bluetooth problems in one move.

Step 5: Check Chrome isn't muting the phone

Right-click the "Phone System" tab at the top of Chrome. If the menu says "Unmute site", click it.

Also worth a quick look while you're there: click the padlock at the left of the address bar and confirm Microphone is set to Allow and Sound is not set to Mute. If you change either, reload the page.

Step 6: Ring your own mobile

Call your own mobile number from the web phone.

Tell us: did your mobile actually ring, even if you couldn't hear anything?

It rang — calls are being placed correctly and the phone system is working. The fault is purely in the audio path.
It didn't ring — that's a different and more significant problem. Contact us with the time you tried.

Step 7: Try a different computer or browser

Log into the web phone on a different computer, or
Use a different browser (Edge) on the same computer.

Tell us: does it work on the other computer or browser?

Works elsewhere - the fault is specific to your usual computer or browser.
Fails everywhere - it's your network or your account, not the machine. Continue to Step 8.

Tip: if it works in Edge but not Chrome, a Chrome extension may be interfering. Open an Incognito window (extensions are disabled there by default), log in and test. If Incognito works, re-enable your extensions one at a time to find which one is responsible.

Step 8: Try a different network

If the steps above haven't fixed it - and particularly if the speaker icon never appeared in Step 1 - this test is the one that will tell us the most.

On your mobile, turn on the personal hotspot.
On your computer, disconnect from the office Wi-Fi (or unplug the network cable) and connect to that hotspot instead.
Log into the web phone and make a test call.

Tell us the result either way - a test that rules something out is just as useful to us as one that finds the fault.

Audio works on the hotspot - your computer, headset, browser and account are all fine. Something on your office network is blocking the incoming sound. Pass the IT provider section below to whoever manages your firewall.
Audio still fails on the hotspot - the network isn't the cause. Contact us with your results.

It's also worth asking a colleague on the same office network to make a test call. If everyone is affected, that points firmly at the network rather than any individual computer.

What to send us

The more of this you can include, the faster we can resolve it. None of it is essential — send what you have.

Your answers to Steps 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8 - especially the speaker icon question in Step 1.
The date and time of a failing call, as precisely as you can, and your extension number.
The number you dialled, or the caller's number if it was an incoming call.
Whether you heard ringing before the call connected, or silence from the very start. This genuinely matters - it tells us where in the call the sound stopped.
Whether the other person could hear you.
Does it affect incoming calls, outgoing calls, or both? Please test both - it's easy to assume, and the answer often surprises people.
Whether it happens on every call or only some. If only some, is there a pattern - certain numbers, certain times of day?

Optional: a connection report

If you're comfortable doing so, this gives us hard data and can save a day of back-and-forth:

In Chrome or Edge, open a new tab and go to chrome://webrtc-internals
Leave that tab open.
Switch back to your phone tab and make a failing test call. Stay on it for about 30 seconds.
Return to the webrtc-internals tab and find the button near the top to create a dump or download the diagnostics.
Send us the file it produces.

Don't worry about interpreting it - that's our job. Just capture it while the fault is happening.

Information for your IT provider

If Step 8 showed that audio works on a mobile hotspot but not on the office network, please pass this section to whoever manages your firewall and internet connection.

The web phone carries its audio over UDP as an encrypted media stream. The important detail is that the call setup traffic and the audio traffic behave very differently on a network:

Setup traffic is a handful of small packets, sent in a brief burst.
Audio is a continuous, steady stream - roughly 50 packets per second per call, in each direction.

This matters because a network can pass setup traffic perfectly while dropping the audio stream entirely. Calls will connect, ring and show as established, and be completely silent. "The call connects, therefore the firewall is fine" is not a safe conclusion.

Worth checking, in rough order of likelihood:

SIP ALG on the router or firewall. This feature is intended to help VoIP and very often breaks it. Disable it.
UTM / IPS / deep packet inspection modules, particularly anything described as VoIP inspection, UDP flood protection, or session rate limiting. These commonly permit the handshake and then throttle or drop the sustained media stream.
QoS and traffic shaping policies that may be policing or deprioritising UDP.
Inbound bandwidth, especially at busy times. Each concurrent call needs roughly 80–100 kbps in each direction. That's small, but not if the link is already saturated.
VPNs or SD-WAN tunnels in the path. Asymmetric routing through a tunnel can drop return media while leaving everything else working.
Carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT) on the internet service, which can behave badly with long-lived UDP flows.

To confirm the diagnosis directly, run a packet capture on an affected workstation filtered to UDP traffic from the phone system's IP address, during a failing call. If outbound packets are present and inbound packets are absent or stop shortly after the call connects, the media stream is being dropped somewhere upstream of that machine.

When to contact support

Get in touch if:

You've worked through the steps above and the problem persists.
Audio works on a mobile hotspot but not on your office network and your IT provider has already checked the section above.
The fault is intermittent - it clears up and then comes back.
More than one person on your network is affected.
Your mobile didn't ring in Step 6.

Please include as much of the What to send us list as you can. Cases that arrive with the Step 1 answers and a failing call time are typically resolved several times faster than those without.

Quick reference

10 of 10 rows


Speaker icon appears on the tab, but silence	Sound is arriving - wrong output device	Steps 2–5
No speaker icon on the tab at all	Sound isn't reaching your browser - network	Steps 6–8
YouTube plays fine but calls are silent	Default Communications Device in Windows	Step 3
Headset missing from the phone's device list	Plug in first, then refresh the page	Step 2
Bluetooth headset, no sound	Connected to your mobile instead of the computer	Step 4
Works in Edge or Incognito but not Chrome	A browser extension	Step 7
Works on hotspot, fails on office Wi-Fi	Office network or firewall	IT provider section
Colleagues on the same network affected too	Office network or firewall	IT provider section
Your mobile doesn't ring at all	Different fault	Contact support
They can't hear you either	Different fault	Contact support

If anything in this article is unclear, or the steps don't match what you're seeing on screen, contact our support team and we'll walk through it with you.

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