Aux cord reading as headphones

Ah, I see what happened — when you first plugged the adapter in, iOS asked whether it was headphones, a speaker, or another type of device. That little popup is part of Apple’s *Headphone Safety* feature, and once you select “headphones,” iOS treats that jack as if you’re using earbuds. The side effect is that it may limit the maximum volume to protect your hearing, which isn’t ideal when you’re sending audio through your car’s AUX input.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a direct “reset” button for that popup. But here’s something I suggest that you try:

1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Headphone Safety.
2. Toggle off Reduce Loud Audio. This bypasses the volume limit that gets enforced when iOS thinks you’re using headphones.

If you want to clear the headphone classification, sometimes switching to a different Lightning-to-AUX adapter will trigger the prompt again. But since you’re using a basic Walmart adapter, chances are iOS just sees it as “headphones” every time.

Tesserax wrote:

Ah, I see what happened — when you first plugged the adapter in, iOS asked whether it was headphones, a speaker, or another type of device. That little popup is part of Apple’s *Headphone Safety* feature, and once you select “headphones,” iOS treats that jack as if you’re using earbuds. The side effect is that it may limit the maximum volume to protect your hearing, which isn’t ideal when you’re sending audio through your car’s AUX input.

Ah! I don't recall seeing that but I must have.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a direct “reset” button for that popup.

It's really easy to fix if it's BT. Silly there isn't an easy way to do it for wired.

Gobling0re wrote:

When I first plugged my aux in with the adapter to my car, i accidentally pressed that it was headphones and not a speaker is there any way to change this?

What issues is this causing? I've connected my phone to my car's AUX jack for years. I don't recall it ever asking whether this was a headphone or a speaker.

Note that adapters, especially the cheap ones, tend to go bad in weird ways. Does the adapter plug into your USB-C port so that you can plug the 3.5 cable into that and the other end into the AUX jack? If so, you might want to try this instead:

USB-C to 3.5 mm Audio Cable (1.2 m) - Apple

A bit more information will be helpful:

• What is the make/model of this adapter?
• What is the make/model/year of your car?
• What exactly is this "aux" cord you are referring to?
• What have you tried, so far yourself, to resolve this that didn't end up working for you?

You're very welcome! I'm glad you got it worked out.

Agreed!