Unplug of Mic required for playback

I am new to audacity, can someone help me? I use an external mic for input and a laptop speaker for audio playback, I can record the voice but I hear nothing on the playback, However, I can hear playback if I unplug the mic. it happens in both win 10 and win 11

in the preference, I have chosen external mic and internal speaker for playback

It’s annoying that I have to unplug the external mic every time to verify that the voice is good enough for further processing.

This sounds odd.

What I suspect is happening is that the OS (or even the hardware) is disabling the internal speaker when the mic is plugged in, maybe because it thinks the port is a combined mic/speaker port.
Does the same thing affect other apps playback, or is it only Audacity?

What kind of mic and what port is it - USB? 3.5mm?

Or, if it’s a USB mic sometimes Windows will choose the “new” USB audio device as the default recording AND playback device, even if it doesn’t actually work for output/playback. You can change it in the Windows settings.

In the latter case, Doug, wouldn’t it appear as a different device? And if Audacity is set to use a specific device it shouldn’t be affected? The (ancient) technology of diverting the main speaker used to appear as the same device, so Audacity wouldn’t be able to get around it.

Windows audio is of course a mystery.

@ SecretCode You guessed it right, it happens even in system sound test, probably a windows issue

Its a 3.5mm jack External mic Boyo M1, I have the same issue if I use the headphone mic, (i can hear in headphones, but I can’t hear in system speaker)

In the system audio setting, I didn’t allow the app to take control of the device to see any software interfering without much success

As I have to give voice-over to a lot of videos, using audacity seems impractical, any workaround?
Does the USB Mic have any of these issues?

Not a Windows person but I think this particular issue won’t happen with a USB mic.