How do I stop HDMI grabbing the audio and let it just have the video ?

I want to use HDMI from my laptop to a monitor.
However, I want to plug a speaker into my laptop for the audio.

However, HDMI grabs both the video and the audio , - I just want it to grab the video and leave the audio alone.

Can it be done ?

Disable the HDMI audio in the Device Manager. Just manually reselecting "Speakers" can also do it but you will have to do that every time. Disabling the HDMI audio prevents having to manually change the playback device.

I have an HDMI connected monitor but use the PC audio and disabling the HDMI audio is what I did.

Click the volume icon in your taskbar, you can choose which audio to output on.

thanks, I'll give it a try

There are posts on this forum and other computer forums about this. On all threads I've seen, disabling the HDMI audio in the Device Manager has been the "fix".