iPhone stuck in "headphones" mode

Question

Level 2

212 points

iPhone stuck in "headphones" mode

Earlier I accidentally grabbed my iPod headphones instead of my iPhone headphones and I think I may have jammed them in there too far. Because now I can't hear any of the keyboard clicks or sounds and when I receive a text message there's no sound either. And when I receive a call it won't allow me to hear the person on the other line unless I put my headphones in or use the speaker function. And when I turn the ringer volume up/down it says "headphones" in parentheses as if it's been set to "headphones" mode or something! Is it possible that I jammed them in so far that my iPhone thinks my headphones are still plugged in? Did I just totally ruin my iPhone? What do I do? Anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks!

Windows XP Pro

Posted on Jan 15, 2008 9:14 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ima747

Level 1

5 points

Aug 29, 2008 9:43 AM in response to SoCalSkippy

I've had this problem perviously and the unplug-replug 7-8 times worked for me the last 2 times it glitched but not this time. I cut the end off a Q tip and went rooting around in the headphone jack and dug out a little lint which didn't solve it but atleast there's no lint in there now... I did a software restore, tried all the other tricks I could find but here's how I finally got it working again.

Headphones out, ipod stoped
Called my phone from another phone
the ringer rang out the speaker but when I tried to talk and listen I got nothing (obviously trying to use the headphones which weren't there)
turned on speaker phone, could now talk and listen.
turned off speaker phone and it went back to working properly
hang up, enjoy working speaker again.

My suspicion is that it's a combination of hardware and software issues that cause the hangup. The most likely cause is a sticky switch in the jack causing the iphone not to properly recognize when headphones are removed. However once you unstick the jack (dig out lint, jiggle it with a bunch of insert-removes etc.) the software may still glitch and apparently asking it to go to speakerphone then back to regular mode (which should CHECK for headphones in theory, and not just trust the jack switch) may just do the trick...

If it rings out the main speaker it has to know on some level that the headphones arn't there...

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Answer 2

Oct 1, 2008 8:09 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

Try "twisting" the headphone plug while it's in the jack. I went to the Apple store today after many restores. I though my internals speakers had gone.

Not the I can "recommend" this other method, but for those where nothing else will work and you are out of warranty: I would try a small cotton swab with rubbing alcohol. I use this method in the recording studio to clean contacts. Only a last resort.

With both methods a twisting motion will work best.

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Answer 3

Oct 14, 2008 12:59 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

Since I don't recall ever plugging in headphones to my new iPhone, this "stuck in headphone" problem caught me by surprise. The only way I was able to tell that I was in headphone mode was by trying to adjust the volume during an actual phone call.

As suggested in this thread, I tried using some computer speakers to plug in/out a bunch of times, but my phone was still stuck in headphone mode whenever I tried to place a call or receive a call.

So, I plugged in my computer speakers, made a call to my home answering machine and heard my call on the speakers. Then, while still in my call, I unplugged the computer speakers and it fixed the problem. My iPhone is no longer in headphone mode and I can place calls again.

Apple really should consider adding some sort of "Setting" where the mode can be changed manually. All this plug in/out stuff is really quirky.

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Answer 4

Jun 23, 2009 9:04 PM in response to bigdalla

This problem happened to me a few weeks ago and I tried everythiing in the first two pages of this thread. And I mean everything. I eventually got it to work after doing the complete reset, which changes settings. loses icon positions, etc. A real pain. I live on the Gulf Coast ( Pensacola ) and things are very hot and humid, I keep the iPhone in my shirt breast pocket and when I had the problem I had been outside and my shirt was wet with perspiration.

Anyway, it got fixed and the phone was fine for these three or so weeks.

Today we had the first big rainstorm in some time. I got home, plugged the phone into the charger cable, and was reading in bed when I got a call, and no sound. Looked closely and it was in headphone mode. I definitely did not want to go the reset restore whatever again and came back to this thread.

Read the post about sucking on the headphone receptacle (and it made perfect sense) and pulled one slower half-lung capacity draw and touched the volume control and it had switched from Ringer (headphone) to Ringer. As I was watching it switched back to Ringer (headphone). I then did a longer and stronger pull and it switched back to Ringer. I gave it a couple more pulls for good measure and it's working fine.

Never in the most recent cycle had I used earphones they had not been near my iPhone for a week.

I think there may be more than one reason that this happens, but moisture on the inside of the headphone jack (and not necessarily in the ID of the barrel) apparently gives enough conduction to make the iPhone think that the earphone are plugged in.

Being inside with cool dry air conditioning is the first step, sucking that air from the charger connector through the iPhone apparently dries condensation and the conduction path goes away.

Some of the other "fixes" may just be spending time inside in dry air and whatever you were doing when the conductive path dried up is credited with the fix. Including putting the plug in and out from 7 to 9 to 50 times.

Blowing in dry air or sucking dry air through the iPhone (in a dry air environment) and out the headphone jack should be the first thing you should try. Don't blow your water vapor rich exhalation into the headphone jack (obviously)

I can see iPhone carrying tourists/conventioneering visitors to New Orleans in the hotel lobbies sucking on their iPhones after a hot afternoon rainstorm. The warm moist air gets into the iPhone, they go into an air conditioned lobby and the inside of the headphone jack cools, makes condensation happen where the warm moist air still is (inside the iPhone) around the connections in the wall and on the outside of the connector barrel and they are stuck in headphone mode.

But because they have read these posts about sucking the jack, that's what happens. What a sight.

Grins from Pensacola,

bigbill

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Answer 5

awillimd

Level 1

31 points

Aug 1, 2009 6:16 PM in response to awillimd

Here's an update to my earlier post suggesting that it may be an overheating problem. Cancel that theory...I've found the solution that worked for me.

OK, so here’s my story…and possibly a solution. My iPhone would get stuck in Ringer (headphone) mode. No amount of inserting and removing the headphone jack would work. Blowing into the jack hole didn’t work. This morning I went to the Apple Genius Bar. They did some tests, blew crap out of the hole and the problem did not go away. Eventually they completely wiped my phone back to its virgin state. Still didn’t do the trick. They offered to exchange the phone (of course, it’s about a month out of warranty) with an exact copy (white, 3G, 16GB) for $199. I declined as I’m eligible for a lower cost 3GS upgrade in December. Came home depressed wondering why I didn’t take out an AppleCare Plan. Again tried all the tricks and the problem just seemed to get worse (i.e. it just stayed in headphone mode). So, here’s what worked for me. I normally use a pair of Etymotic earbuds instead of the supplied iPhone earbuds. The Etymotic jack (that thing that goes inside the iPhone) is different from the iPhone earbud jack. The Etymotics jack has two black bands (separating the jack into three separate metal pieces). The native iPhone earbuds jack has three white band that separates the jack into four separate metal pieces. Somehow, my Etymotic jack messed up the iPhone settings and caused it to get stuck in the headphone mode. The only way to get it back was to re-insert the Etymotic jack. That has reset the iPhone and everything is working fine again. So, if you are using any brand of earbud other than the native iPhone buds, that may be causing the problem. Hope that helps. Works like a charm for me.

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Answer 6

mbs44

Level 1

0 points

Apr 11, 2012 1:31 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

My husband couldn't hear on his iPhone original and volume showed earphones. I tried plugging/unplugging the earphones several times and this didn't work. I did look in the headphone slot and there appeared to be some lint - very hard to see - so I got a flashlight and then, with my older eyes a magnifying glass. Tried gently using a toothpick and then a needle to get the lint out. Got it the lint moved to the side. FINALLY!!! I got the Dust Gun (compressurized air), and with the second squirt the lint came flying out!! The iphone immediately returned to regular sound mode - no more showing earphones! And a Happy Hubby again.

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Answer 7

Dec 4, 2012 6:30 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

This is a cross-post/re-post, but after reading this thread, I think my experience may help someone else for whom none of the "sure-fixes" worked. . . like me.

I thought that I'd add my experience with my 2-month-old iPhone 5. Inexplicably, the iPhone 5's speakers ceased to work and I got the "notification" that I was using headphones. . . which I wasn't. The phone worked just fine with my Jambox; and, when I tested the ring-tones (switching them around), the speakers on the phone worked. But, that's the only time the speakers worked.

I tried every trick recommended -- vacuumed the headset hole; blew in the headset hole; re-booted the phone; cleaned the headset hole; turned bluetooth on and off; turned silent switch on and off; pulled the headset jack in and out several times; and, generally tried any old thing that occurred to me. [I didn't try the 2-minute refrigeration -- was a bit leery of that b/c it sounded a lot drying a unexpectedly-bathed-phone in a microwave. Remember people with that story?]

I awoke at 3:30 am and started worrying about the hour-long drive to the nearest Apple store during the holiday rush; then, an Ah-Ha moment came. I needed to do the equivalent of zapping the P-RAM (younger users may need to google that). So, at 3:45 am I did a hard re-boot: I pressed the Home and the Sleep-Wake button until the phone shut down and re-started. That did it.

Reflecting now: probably a restore from a backup would accomplish the same thing.

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Answer 8

Dec 21, 2012 4:24 AM in response to russellsimpson79

russellsimpson79 wrote:

hard reboot by holding home and lock button at same time until apple logo shows then letgo and press home buttong twice

when phone is booted up take out headphones. go to music and play a song and leave it until the phone auto locks itself. then plug in headphone jack, unlock phone and go into music. stop song and go back to home screen. take out headphone jack.

perform another hard reboot

at is point you should have use of your normal speakers but the volume will keep going to zeroon its own. go to settings, sound and de-activate change with buttons. manually put sounder slider to max and hey presto hopefully you should be back in business.

REALLY THANK YOU A LOT!

Your solution worked like a charm.

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Answer 9

Oct 23, 2013 6:14 AM in response to SoCalSkippy

Same problem here wondering why my audio was all muted then noticed the headphones volume was showing up with no headphones plugged in, I have a iPhone 5 with iOS 7.0.3 but thanks to the previous poster I managed to get a Cotten ear bud in the headphone jack on the iPhone and at first had no luck clearing the problem but when I pushed the earbud right the way in and gave it a spin and removed it carefully not to leave any of the ear bud behind I pulled out a small piece of dirt and the volume was restored. Thanks for the posts seems like a unavoidable issue with mobiles these days.

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Answer 10

Apr 23, 2014 7:33 AM in response to SoCalSkippy

I just spent two hours trawling through the internet and Apple forum for suggestions. I tried reinserting the headphones several times, sucking on the headphone jack, turning on the alarm in lock mode etc. The only thing that worked for me was inserting a cocktail stick into the jack and moving it around very gently to try to dislodge anything that may have been in there. It paid off, as two small pieces of silver debris came out (I did have to suck out the second piece, but this came out easily as it was no longer 'stuck' at the bottom. I then switched on the phone and it's now back in ringer mode! I'm not sure what these pieces of debris are, but they were obviously causing the phone to lock into headphone mode.

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Answer 11

sebvdree

Level 1

0 points

Sep 9, 2014 12:38 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

I had this problem as well and i saw many others had it, so I tried following the tips people had posted, but none worked and I was getting scared because I had dropped my ipod underneath a running tap, and thought there was irreversible water damage. But in the end it was ok and here's what I did:

- Plugging headphones in and out many times, didnt work

- Used a toothpick carefully, didnt work but took out lots of lint

- Blew on/Sucked (haha) the hole, didnt work

- Used a toothpick with cotton from q tips at the end, didnt work, so I forced the cotton to get stuck inside, and then i took it out, (however I got super stressed because I couldnt get it out at first), didnt work but took out more dirt

- Did a hard reboot of the ipod by holding down home and lock screen, then plugged in my headphones while the ipod was off, then turned the ipod on and played music until the ipod automatically locked itself, took the headphones out, and it finally worked!

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Answer 12

Mar 26, 2015 1:13 PM in response to Markos.gr

I just fixed the problem by poking a *wooden toothpick* in the earphone jack and dragging out the lint. I spent a few minutes scraping the tip of the toothpick to different sides of the jack, then dragging the toothpick out. Each time I did this, I removed a little lint. However, it was still stuck in "headphone mode." I was just about to give up, but on my 6th or 7th attempt of dragging out lint, it worked!!!! Problem FIXED!!!!!

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Answer 13

Peteb4u

Level 1

0 points

Jul 17, 2015 3:48 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

I Had this problem. I used a compressed air can that is typically used to blow the dust off your computer keyboard. Placed the long plastic nozzle in the hole for the ear buds, shot compressed air into thejack, and it cleared up the problem. I can only assume there was some dust or dirt that got in there.

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Answer 14

Jul 29, 2016 7:46 PM in response to SoCalSkippy

This is a common issue with iPhones, as it's happened when I had my 4S, 5S and now my 6+. In all instances, I used the same fix. To get a better understanding, if you look at your headphones or headphones with mic, you'll notice 2-3 divisions in the plug. This corresponds with the 3 connections in the jack. Shine a flashlight in the jack, and you'll notice 3 tiny steel balls. These steel balls are spring loaded and align with the three divisions in the plug. On occasion, most likely caused by dust or dirt, one of the balls gets stuck in, confusing the iPhone into thinking a headphone plug is plugged in. Now that you understand how it works and how it fails, you have to get the problem ball unstuck. Grab a cotton swab, dip in rubbing alcohol, spin it tight and out between your fingers, and stick it in the jack while spinning it. This will clean out any dirt stuck in the jack. Now grab a plastic head tack, and stick it in the jack. Press it against the side with the steel balls at an angle. You should feel the three steel balls with the point of the tack. The problem ball, should feel like a hole, because it's stuck in the in position. Pay particular attention to that hole. Pull out while maintaining pressure at an angle against the side of the jack. Check your volume button. If you still see Headphone on the display, repeat the procedure until you see Ringer. Problem should be resolved.

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Answer 15

Sabz79

Level 1

4 points

Sep 20, 2016 6:01 AM in response to SoCalSkippy

I cannot believe I had this issue today - literally 4 days before I get the iPhone7. I went into panic mode and spoke to Apple Support chat online - we spent almost an hour testing voice memos, restoring my phone from backup and as new - no luck. Then we got cut off 😕

But then someone else took over and 'kindly' warned me that I was out of warranty so I would be liable for any hardware costs. YAY! However they told me of the simple trick of getting a cotton bud and gently inserting it into the jack to clear it out. I had no cotton buds so I delicately used a cocktail stick. Five mins later of tiny bits of lint coming out, hey presto! A bigger ball comes out and my phone went back into ringer mode! I could have cried. Literally.

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