How to Get Sound on Reddit GIFs & Videos (App Fix)
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Reddit mutes audio by default; every time you open the app or refresh a feed, the speaker starts. For most videos, a single tap on the speaker icon is all it takes. GIFs are a different story. Reddit GIFs are encoded without an audio track, which means the speaker button either doesn't appear or does nothing when you tap it. That distinction confuses a lot of people, because what looks like a video on Reddit is often a GIF in disguise.
This guide explains why Reddit audio behaves the way it does, and walks through every practical fix for both mobile and desktop: the speaker button, app settings, browser fixes, the Redgifs no-sound issue, and what to do when the audio is simply missing from the file itself.
How to turn on sound on Reddit app
Here are a couple of ways to turn the sound on for videos on the Reddit mobile app:
Step 1: If your phone has a silent switch on the side, turn it off.
Step 2:
From the feed:
When you scroll to a video you’d like to turn the sound on, click the ‘Speaker’ icon at the bottom right of the video.
From the Video Player:
Click the ‘Speaker’ icon at the bottom right of the screen.
Step 3: Clear the Reddit app cache:
On Android: Settings > Apps > Reddit > Storage & Cache > Clear Cache. On iOS: offload the app through iPhone Storage settings, then reinstall it.
Step 4: Check Reddit's own audio settings:
In the Reddit app, go to your profile icon > Settings > Autoplay and Video. Make sure audio is not disabled at the app level. Some older versions of the Reddit app added a global mute toggle here.
Step 5: Reinstall the app:
If none of the above resolves it, uninstall Reddit and reinstall it fresh from your app store. This clears all cached data and resets any corrupted settings files.
How to get sound on Reddit app
Some videos will say, “Video doesn’t have sound.” Reddit does not allow sound for NSFW videos on the mobile app. But there is a way around it which we will go over here:
Step 1: If you have iOS, Download Apollo from the App Store.
If you have Android, download Sync from the Google Play store.
Step 2: Turn the NSFW filters off for the app you have downloaded in Step 1.
Step 3: Use the app you downloaded in Step 1 to navigate to the video you want to watch. You will be able to view the video with sound.
Why Reddit Videos and GIFs Don't Have Sound?
Reddit started as a link-sharing and text discussion platform. Video came much later, and audio handling still reflects those roots. When you scroll your feed, Reddit autoplays videos silently so they don't interrupt whatever you're listening to. That's a deliberate product decision, not a bug.
The more confusing case is GIFs. A GIF is a looping image format that has never supported audio. Reddit and many third-party sites convert short video clips into GIF-like formats (technically often .gifv or .mp4 files looped without sound) for faster loading and seamless autoplay. When one of these lands in your feed, it looks exactly like a video, but there's no audio track embedded in the file. Tapping the speaker icon produces nothing because there's nothing to unmute.
You can usually tell the difference: if the speaker button is absent entirely, or if tapping it has no effect, you're almost certainly looking at a GIF-format clip rather than a true video upload. Clips posted directly through Reddit's own video uploader will always have a speaker button that works, even if the original content was filmed without sound.
NSFW videos add one more layer. Reddit's app automatically mutes adult content and keeps it muted, regardless of your speaker settings. Unlocking audio for NSFW content requires either a settings change or a third-party app, covered below.
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FAQs
Why does Reddit say the video doesn’t have sound?
Sometimes there will be videos on Reddit without sound. It’s simply a video that did not have sound when the user uploaded it. If the video contains adult content, it will not have sound.
How to get sound on Reddit for NSFW content?
Sound will automatically be on mute for NSFW content on the Reddit app. When you press the speaker icon, it will not enable sound. You can download Apollo for iOS or Sync for Android to enable sound for these videos.
Why isn't the speaker button working on Reddit?
The most common reasons are: the device is on silent mode, the browser tab is muted (on desktop), the app cache is corrupted, or the video itself has no audio track. Work through the troubleshooting steps above in order. If the speaker icon is visible but produces no sound and you've ruled out device settings, the video file likely has an empty or corrupted audio stream.
Final thoughts
Getting sound on the Reddit app is a quick fix that won’t take more than 5 minutes. If you ever need to transcribe a Reddit video to text, you can use Notta. Notta is an audio-to-text app that can record and transcribe Reddit videos in real time. Now you can quickly review the content from any video at any time.
