iPhone stuck in "headphones" mode

Mine was also stuck in headphone mode, I think a tiny water drop must have gotten in the jack when I dropped my phone in the snow. I tried everything else suggested on this page, to no avail. I finally pushed a few rice grains in the hole and left them overnight, with the jack facing up so water could evaporate out. The next morning I removed the rice grains out with a toothpick and-- magic-- phone working again.

Now I tried all of these posted and none work it was when i tested me alarm that I got out of headphone mode. So what I did was make a 5 second timer and the sound played then a cancelled it from my volume up button then just like that my phone was back to normal.

I tried many if not all of the suggestions here after my iPhone 6 got briefly dunked. Finally remembered I had an air can that I used to clean out my iMac keyboard. A couple of short blasts into the headphone plug and VOILA!

For me, the solution was to clean up my iPhone - it was running low on memory and that's what caused it to switch to the Headphones mode. The moment I dumped my photos/videos into computer and cleared some space, the problem went away. Weird stuff.

Hi Pearl,

Thanks for the comments. A bit of lateral thinking really, I knew if I played something in iTunes first and then looked in the settings for music there should be an output for the app.

I tried everything from sucking on the jack to using a q-tip, even putting my phone in rice overnight nothing worked. So I tried something myself I plugged my headphones out turned my phone off and turned the ringer off at the same time and it worked!!!! Try this if nothing else is working.

You're not responsible. Virtually every recent iPhone user with whom I've spoken has the same problem. There are about 25 YouTube videos all offering the same home remedies to fix the "Stuck Headphones?" situation. The only one that works as promised is cleaning out the headphone jack, but that's not the cause of most of these reports. It's a shame Apple hasn't come up with a general cure, 'cause it would be a great marketing play. Instead it hides away....

I just wanted to pitch in because this worked for me and I know how frustrating this can all be. Well, I tried everything listed here, especially taking the headphones in and out over 30 times. When I put the Apple original headphones just as I happened to turn on the phone and then took them out it went to ringer for a few seconds before switching back to headphones. This made it feel like it was a hardware problem, not necessarily water-related, but rather more like debris being in there. I had already checked and cleaned it with a soft pipe-cleaner with no luck. It being switched to ringer momentarily gave me hope, so I plugged and unplugged... it would very sporadically switch and then go back to headphones. So I tried the lead powder, and that worked, but again, only for a few seconds. Then I sucked out the air and again it worked instantly, but wouldn't stay. Finally, I took a plastic q-tip, but just the plastic and wiggled it around in there before plugging the headphones in and out. This time it worked for good. It was perseverance, but the fact that it switched was a good indicator that it was physically stuck. And the lead powder and sucking out the air I think helped, with the plastic of the q-tip. The pipe cleaner was too soft. Anyway. I hope this helps someone. Right now it is still going...

Thank you so much! I tried your advice and called myself from a landline, but it didn’t work. However , after a few tries I reversed it and used my iPhone to call out (to the landline) and it worked!!!

Just for everyone else- My iphone was started answering in headphone mode, I have hearing aids with bluetooth, so it was really annoying. After some research, I decided to check out my headphone jack. I used a big magnifying glass with light, and dug around with a wooden toothpick. I dug out a decent wad of lint, but still had a problem. So I kept digging, blew stuff out, tapped the phone on the table lightly to help drop stuff out, and used the pick to push the little springs that make the jack click when you put it in. I also put in and took out a headphone plug several times.

My Iphone came back and works fine now. The phone switches automatically if you have something in the headphone jack, they must have a sensor that reads when it is, and the lint was probably setting off the switch. Good luck all.

Thank you so much for this... I accidentally dropped my phone in some water and didn’t know what to do and I was freaking out, and also didn’t want to get in trouble for doing so😄, I tried this and it fixed it immediately, thank you so much

If that does not work then go to settings > Sounds > Then play with The Ringer and Alert sound panel

If you are afraid of being shocked. Then let me just give you a method that worked for my iPhone 5s. All I did was go into Settings > Sounds and then played with that bar that says ringer on it

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