prince2phor59
What you are seeing is expected. Disabling PulseAudio works, but PipeWire is not started automatically, and the default OSS device may be wrong.
After installing PipeWire and WirePlumber with sudo pkg install pipewire wireplumber, disabling PulseAudio by adding Hidden=true to /usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop correctly stops PulseAudio. However, GhostBSD does not ship XDG autostart files for PipeWire or WirePlumber, so nothing replaces it. This leaves you with no running sound server, which breaks the volume icon and causes confusing pactl info output.
The next step is to start PipeWire manually to confirm it works. Log in to your desktop and run pipewire & followed by wireplumber &. After that, run pactl info. If PipeWire is active, it will report PulseAudio running on PipeWire, and the volume icon should start working again.
Once manual startup works, make it persistent. Create /usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/pipewire.desktop with an Exec line that runs pipewire, and create /usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/wireplumber.desktop with an Exec line that runs wireplumber. Log out and log back in to confirm they start automatically.
The remaining issue is device selection. Your need to run sysctl hw.snd.default_unit=1 means FreeBSD is choosing the wrong default sound device, usually HDMI instead of headphones or speakers. This is an OSS problem, not a PipeWire one. Fix it permanently by adding hw.snd.default_unit=1 to /etc/sysctl.conf and rebooting.
With PulseAudio disabled, PipeWire and WirePlumber started via XDG autostart, and the correct OSS default unit set, audio works reliably and the volume icon behaves normally.
