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iPad home button not working

There does seem to be a systemic problem with the iPad home button. There are countless reports on the net of people who are experiencing problems with the button not working, and I'm now onto my second iPad in a row that's experiencing the same issue - when my first one stopped working I brought it to the Apple Store, who instantly replaced it without question, even though it wouldn't behave badly for me in the store. But now that new iPad is doing exactly the same thing. Symptoms are that the button works very erratically, and often not at all. It's hard to figure out if it's a hardware problem or something else. There are countless solutions proposed on the net, most of which amount to shaking a bag of bat's teeth over it. Anyone had any real success with any technique? It really seems like it's an iOS problem rather than a hardware problem, as iPhones and iPad Touches are also reporting it?

Posted on Jun 3, 2012 5:04 PM

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Posted on Jul 8, 2012 3:04 PM

I had this problem with an iPad2, purchased in May 2011. It occured at about the 8 month point. After a few weeks of increasingly erratice behavior, the home button failed completely. Apple replaced the iPad, in the store, without question. The problem occured again, in the brand new iPad, after 60 days. It appears to be a known issue. Resets and restores did not solve the problem.


I am currently using the second iPad with its home button working less and less consistently. As a workaround, I use the ACCESSIBILITY setting in Settings / General. I have it turned on. It gives me an on screen option for the home button. Should the physical button fail completely, as it did in my first iPad, this will at least give me an option to use the iPad until I take it back to the store. This is important if you want to remove confidential data before turning the iPad in for repair.


It goes without saying that this is disappointing.

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Question marked as Best reply

Jul 8, 2012 3:04 PM in response to Maxplanar

I had this problem with an iPad2, purchased in May 2011. It occured at about the 8 month point. After a few weeks of increasingly erratice behavior, the home button failed completely. Apple replaced the iPad, in the store, without question. The problem occured again, in the brand new iPad, after 60 days. It appears to be a known issue. Resets and restores did not solve the problem.


I am currently using the second iPad with its home button working less and less consistently. As a workaround, I use the ACCESSIBILITY setting in Settings / General. I have it turned on. It gives me an on screen option for the home button. Should the physical button fail completely, as it did in my first iPad, this will at least give me an option to use the iPad until I take it back to the store. This is important if you want to remove confidential data before turning the iPad in for repair.


It goes without saying that this is disappointing.

Jun 3, 2012 5:26 PM in response to Maxplanar

You can try waving bats teeth over your iPad, but it really isn't a common problem and there is no system or software issue I'm aware of that causes a home button to stop working. Before you take your iPad back to Apple, try the standard trouble shooting steps......Reboot, Restore from Backup, Restore as New Device. If you need direction on any of these, let us know. But, if you do all three and your home button is still non responsive, it's likely a hardware issue and should be looked at by Apple. My houselhold has had 3 iPads and 4 iPhones over the last few years. Not one of our devices has ever experienced a home button which doesn't work.

Jul 9, 2012 1:43 AM in response to lobsterghost1

I would disagree that it isn't a common problem - there's countless threads about it around the net. It really does seem like a real issue, and Apple's Genius Bar replacement was very clearly becuase "yes, that happens". I have had to give up using the Home button on the new, replacement iPad they gave me, and I just use the four finger swipe to return to the home menu.

Oct 1, 2017 10:01 AM in response to May Tha-Hla

My iPad Pro 12.9 suddenly started misbehaving today. The Home button stopped working intermittently and wouldn't return me to the home screen and in some cases wouldn't turn the screen on from black. I kind of assumed it was a physical switch or contact problem. However, I'd been meaning to update IOS to 11.0.1 for a while so when I could get a screen working I went to Settings and updated the IOS. Everything has now returned to normal - so it seems the glitch was a software one.

Jul 9, 2012 2:58 AM in response to Maxplanar

Having removed the iPad2 from the magnetic case it then worked without problems for about 2 weeks but started giving problems again. I have now initialised the accessibility button and use that when the home button fails to work. Using the four finger swipe I found a less attractive option. Clearly there is a problem with the home buttons. What surprises me is that Apple do not seem to be working to fix it.

Aug 26, 2012 9:33 PM in response to Maxplanar

I know this seems......silly?!? My home button doesn't/hasent worked in the past and I got it fixed. Try this. With your iPad in portrait view (long ways up and down), press and hold the home button. While continuing to hold the home button, turn the iPad to landscape view (long ways left to right), then back to portrait view. Make sure your screen rotates when you do this. Now let go of the home button. Hopefully, this is a fix to the "more common" issue in this case and resolves your problem.


Good luck!

iPad home button not working

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