iPhone 4 Home Button not working properly

Heh. Maybe I will. Not a bad idea.

Did it work for you?

im temperorily safe from buttongate as i got a replacement under warranty.

My home button stopped working months ago but i found if i plugged it in to charge i could sometimes get the button to work again. so i never bothered to fix the underlying problem.

After reading these solutions i came to the conclustion that there was a lot of dirt which was causing problems. i tried the rubbing acohol approach but that did not work. the issue was much bigger than that. what i ended up doing was i took a tooth scrapping thing, its like a metal tooth cleaner for scrapping around your gums and i i used it to remove a lot of lint that built up around the connection. I always have my phone in my pocket and apparently its pretty messy in there.

after that i reapplied some rubbing alcohol and let it dry, and so far so good.

If you try what i did i would say be very gentle.

This thread is getting difficult to read due to too many reply.😁

1) There is no Calibration trick etc etc - it does not work, do not wast you time !

2) If your home button is randomly unresponsive : it is not related to software! it is an hardware issue due to dirt or broken parts. May be you should have a look at http://www.homebuttonfix.com/. it's worth it!

3) If 2) does not solve your problem, consider repairing your phone!

Good luck!

raztoky, this is a great little video! Thanks for sharing! I will try this when my Home button stops responding again.

Keep in mind, there is no calibration trick that works for YOU. It does, however, work for ME. When I do it I often stop having trouble for weeks. Again, software changes don't EVER solve true hardware problems, even for a minute or two. So I'm not convinced that I have a hardware problem. AGAIN, there may well be different problems happening that produce the same or similar symptoms for different people. There is very likely a software issue, but there is not yet any proof. Apple doesn't acknowledge problems with their software unless a) there is absolutely no disputing it-- as in the issues with the map app they released with the 5; or b) they find a fix for it. It's about saving face not helping customers.

Considering the difficulty you're having with this thread, perhaps it might have been a better idea to just start a new thread for those who can't solve their problem with the native app calibration work-around. I agree, having to scroll through pages of a thread can be a difficult waste of your time. Better to be part of the solution than to complain and then keep perpetuating the problem.

Thanks for another great resource for these problems! 😎

So I run around with this iPhone since 1,5 years and the home button did not work most of the times, I had to press it really hard to get it rarely. I used Assistive Touch at first but that doesn't work smoothly with a jailbroken device with some more-than-are-good-tweaks so I used several activator gestures for the main purposes of the home button. Today I just had nothing to do and found this and other threads and many said alcohol would fix it - I didn't believe it since no other trick, hard- or software-related, worked for me but I felt like it was worth to give it a try so I stole some nail-polish from my flatmate, shut the phone off, dropped more then I wanted on the phone, pressed the button hard at least 60 times, waited a few minutes, turned it back on and it did work a bit better, but not perfect. So I just did it a second time, dropped not that much alcohol, pressed gentlier and not that often - and voila, it works! Now I'm not sure if I just should be glad that it works now for the first time since I got the iPhone, or that I walked around without being able to use the home button the whole time with a 5-minute-fix just around the corner. I think I'll just be glad - and wish others with the same problem good luck; the alcohol is working miracles at least this time for sure! 😀

Would this also work for iPhone5? My iPhone 5 home button sometimes gets unresponsive.

thanks I did the same thing it is working Fine....🙂

I suggest you turn on AssistiveTouch, at least until you get your problem fixed. Settings>General>Accessibility>Assistive Touch (under Motor) and turn it on. That way you can tap that black square with the white dot and hit "Home." However, it can become a pain after a while, so definitely take your phone into Apple to see what they can do.

Hope that helps! 🙂

Update: I got an upgraded replacement under warranty finally. I was comitted a minimum iphone 4S 32gb but as they were out of stock I received an iPhone 5 32GB.

Condition is Brand new and box packed. Nothing refurbished over here.

Great customer service Apple!

I was having this problem on my ipod touch 4g, i tried everything, blew on it, i restored it, eventually, i took it into Apple and got the genius bar to have a look at it for me, they guys just gave me a new one. BUT, my ipod was under warranty then, is your iphone still under warranty??

I've had this problem on my iPhone 4 now for a few months.

At first the alcohol trick/WD40 one gave me some minor respite.

Done that a couple of times and then the last time even that didn't work.

I've had to have assistive touch on for the last few days.

However, bizarrely, the 'open an apple app - and recalibrate it' actually worked for me this time around!!! (For what its worth I used the compass app)

I'm not expecting it to work forever, but my home button has gone from being completely unusable to working again.

It makes no sense whatsoever but it did work for me. It only takes a couple of seconds and trust me - its worth a shot.

Now I have no idea whether it is a mechanical issue or a software issue!

Thank you Iceburg Lettuce, your solution worked for me and let us hope it goes on working.

Apprcreciate your help.

regrds

What if you cant get into an official app...will it still work with any app?

And by the way, since I changed my case (to an Otterbox), I haven't had one single home button problem ! maybe it was a connectivity issue after all.

Anyway, just wanted to share that with you.