So after finally modernizing my office and moving things off my desk to some shelving units, I was able to pull out my old Bose Companion 2 speakers and connect them to my M4 Mac Mini using a uGreen USB-C male to 3.5 mm female adapter.
After using Gemini to troubleshoot why my audio wasn't coming out of my speakers and remained on the Mac's built-in speaker, I realized I had to go to the System Settings, under the Sounds section and make sure that the USB-C adapter was selected as my output, then as music to my ears, I heard the sultry tones of my VoiceOver coming out of my rich and bassy Bose speakers.
My question is this though, is there any means of renaming the outputs/inputs in the list? I've explored the window and can't find any options to rename. I've even tried to navigate to the desired output and did the VO+Shift+M to open the context menu and sadly, no context menu appeared.
This isn't a major issue, but I would like to change the name from "KT USB Audio" to something a little more recognizable. For reference, I'm running the latest Mac OS Sequoia, as of this post, on an M4 Mac Mini.
Perhaps one can't rename them, but I figured it wouldn't hurt reaching out here in the hopes that perhaps someone might have a definitive answer.
Thanks!
Comments
Can't use headphone jack?
I'm almost certain that the Mac Mini has a female headphone jack of its own on its back side. The closest things I have to that form factor here are an Apple TV and a Mac Studio. The Apple TV doesn't have a headphone jack, but the Mac Studio has one near the HDMI port which is relatively easy to miss by touch because it lacks the ring-shaped extrusion common to that kind of port.
As for renaming devices, I am under the impression that CoreAudio doesn't let you do that, but some drivers make it possible. The cheap USB-c male cable and female dongle from Apple cannot be renamed I think, but the AirPods Max can. If your dongle doesn't have a driver or application of its own, my recommendation is to check whether you can change the name in Audio MIDI Setup, which I strongly doubt.
I'm probably wrong but I…
I'm probably wrong but I have a strong feeling that in audio midi setup you could in fact rename anything...
Reason for Plugging in the Back
The reason why I don't really want to use the front headphone jack is that I would like to keep the wire in the back so it looks cleaner.
Sadly, the Satechi Stand and Hub didn't come with a audio jack in the back, so I'm left using an adapter.
I too saw some forum topics on the net mentioning the Audio Midi Controller app but, being a newbie, got to spend some time looking into that particular app and how to use it correctly without causing any major issues.