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iPhone is stuck in headphone mode

I hadn't used the headphones before this happened. I've tried cleaning out the jack with a match (it looks very clean) and plugging the headphones in and out several times whilst watching a video. Neither worked.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Re-Titled by Host]

iPhone 6, iOS 8, 1 day old.

Posted on Oct 11, 2014 5:26 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 28, 2017 3:43 PM

I've been trying to get this issue fixed on my iPhone 6 almost all day. I never use headphones and my phone has never had any water or physical damage. I tried SO MANY things and what finally worked for me was this.. HOLD DOWN THE VOLUME UP AND DOWN BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME, WHILE STILL HOLDING THESE DO A HARD RESET. SO ALL THE STEPS YOU WILL DO AT THE SAME TIME ARE HOLD DOWN THE VOLUME UP AND DOWN BUTTONS WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE HOME BUTTON AS WELL AS THE BUTTON ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR PHONE. ONCE YOU SEE THE WHITE SCREEN WITH THE APPLE YOU CAN LET GO OF ALL BUTTONS. THIS SHOULD FIX THE ISSUE! I really hope this saves someone a lot of the hassle I've been through!!

302 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 28, 2017 3:43 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

I've been trying to get this issue fixed on my iPhone 6 almost all day. I never use headphones and my phone has never had any water or physical damage. I tried SO MANY things and what finally worked for me was this.. HOLD DOWN THE VOLUME UP AND DOWN BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME, WHILE STILL HOLDING THESE DO A HARD RESET. SO ALL THE STEPS YOU WILL DO AT THE SAME TIME ARE HOLD DOWN THE VOLUME UP AND DOWN BUTTONS WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE HOME BUTTON AS WELL AS THE BUTTON ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR PHONE. ONCE YOU SEE THE WHITE SCREEN WITH THE APPLE YOU CAN LET GO OF ALL BUTTONS. THIS SHOULD FIX THE ISSUE! I really hope this saves someone a lot of the hassle I've been through!!

Feb 14, 2017 8:26 AM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

Saw a bunch of posts on this and some of the answers are pretty stupid. In fact, some are malicious. There is no software reset, reboot, network reset steps to do this. The headphone jack is DIRTY and/or got wet. That simple. Phone thinks there is a jack in there so its stuck in headphone mode. One suggestion was to stick a paperclip in the jack. That will potentially damage your jack and phone!!! How stupid can one be?

Heres a fix that is SAFE and works. Use a cotton swab to rub alcohol or contact cleaner on the head phone cable jack and insert it a few times. Each time you pull it out, wipe the jack clean and insert it again. keep doing it until you see your ringer volume pop back up. Don't stuff a cotton swab up in there. I ended up using a toothpick with a tiny lens cleaner cloth wrapped around it and was able to insert it into the jack and rotate as I pulled it out. Lens cloth came out very dirty. Phone works now.

Jan 9, 2017 7:37 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

I think any solution here might be spurious; I tried plugging and unplugging headphones, reset network settings, and sent a ton of texts to myself. The thing I did last before I got it to work was call myself over and over while switching the silence off and on as my phone was ringing. If it's actually a software issue I'm thinking that each phone will have a different solution. If it's hardware issue I think there would just be one common solution. That's just my thoughts.

Dec 31, 2016 8:21 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

I had the same problem with my iPhone 6 S. I had not used my headphones and my phone was stuck in headphone mode. After reading several postand trying different suggestions, I remembered that I had my charger plugged into my phone earlier . I simply plugged my charger back into my phone and unplugged it ,and it worked.

Hope this helps.

Jan 11, 2017 5:16 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

What did was I blew into the jack and got a cotton ball and took a small peace of held it from one side and turned the other side so than I put it in the jack all the way and made sure that I left a little bit of the cotton ball out so than I can talk it. So when the cotton ball was inside I turned it so that the debris or water inside can get stuck to the cotton ball and pulled it out. When I pulled it out I turned my phone off and it made sound.

Apr 10, 2017 12:20 AM in response to Matrillik

Thanks! I tried calling my iPhone 6, put it on airplane mode, resetting to network settings, shutting it off/on, plugging the headphone jack in/out. Nada. I finally had someone text me a few times and it worked! The phone finally recognized Ringer and not Headphone mode. This took almost 1 1/2 hours to figure out. Just don't reset settings until trying the other simple things first. You have to trick the phone which is the key. Thanks everyone! (I will not let my son use the headphones on this while listening to music and getting a call or text. It may confuse my phone again. I'll know what to do next time tho).

Dec 25, 2014 9:17 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

If nothing works, such as q-tip trick, un-plug in and plug in of the headphone, bluetooth speaker trick, the Setting/General/Accessibility/incoming calls (audio routing for newer software)/set speaker, then headset, turning on shazam, activiate siri...etc. TRY THIS, 1) have someone call you, 2) turn on to speaker mode, 3)turn off the speaker, 4) plug in your headphone, 5) un-plug headphone. This should work!

Jan 5, 2015 10:30 PM in response to r850723

I tried plugging and unplugging my Apple headphones 7-8 times like everyone else was saying, but it didn't work! I had all but given up and decided to go to the Apple Store... Then I stumbled upon this gem of a post!!! Thanks so much! Worked like a charm. I wasn't sure at first because nothing happened immediately, but once I hung up and started playing with my volume buttons it stopped saying "headphones" and started reading "ringer." It worked great, thanks again!

Feb 20, 2015 11:08 AM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

I tried a bunch of the solutions in these kinds of threads. My phone was waterdamaged and the problem started with the heaphone stuck issue. It also died a few times with blue screens of death, but a few nights in a bag with rice solved that problem.


The headphone problem persisted. I solved it by making a call with the headphones in, and during the call, I unplugged the headphones and the voice began coming through the earpiece of the phone again. Tried Spotify afterward and music was coming through the speaker!

Feb 27, 2015 2:46 PM in response to patrickfromnewbridge

I don't know how well this will work for everyone but it has worked well for me twice now.


What you will need:

- Paper Clip.

- A little bit of time.


1. Open up music or a music app. I used Spotify because you can see when the music plays and pauses. If you see the music pause, then that's how you know that you are back in ringer mode.

2. Get the paper clip and move around the inside of the headphone jack. You would do it much like as if you were washing a cup.

3. Look for the music to pause. When the music pauses, it would be like you unplugged the headphones.


This method works really nice for me because I don't always have headphones to use and I'm sure you can use any type of object like a paper clip.

iPhone is stuck in headphone mode

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