iPhone is stuck in headphone mode

Honestly the only thing that worked for me because I was doing dishes at work and my phone was in my apron pocket so water was my first thought so as soon as I got home I put it in rice and a hour later the stupid headphone setting came off which was a relief.

My iPhone 6s is less than a week old. I hadn't even used the headphones and this happened to me (got stuck on headphone mode). Tried everything to no avail, but this worked just as he said: have someone call you, go on speaker, plug in headphones, unplug headphones, talk on handset. Voila!

Thanks r850723, this is the only thing that worked.

Instantly changed the phone from "headphones" to "ringer" when I made a call with headphones in.

I then switched from speaker to handset with headphones out.

This is the only thing that worked!! but it took two goes, I kept my friend on the line for about 10 minutes, kept him on speaker most of the call, plugged the headphones in and out a few times, then DURING the call tried to play audio through several apps like youtube and iTunes until bit by bit the audio came back. The audio came back pretty quickly for music, then for video, but took a few minutes before I got audio back for the actual phonecall (before I could hear him without speakers)

So the general response seems to be "I tried all the hints here for, like, 5 hours, and finally THIS ONE HINT actually worked. THANK YOU". I think the real lesson is: put your phone in a dry place overnight, and try it in the morning. (That being said, what I was doing when a friend's phone started working again was adjusting the volume using the buttons on cable of the original headphones.)

Hi Guys,

Late to the party...but I had the same issue and none of the above worked for me. Eventually I found that the Bluetooth was overriding everything... Apple, you need to get this sorted... anyway, I switched off Bluetooth and Bingo.... worked instantly....calls, music, you name it...

Hope this helps someone.

So this happened to my iPhone 6 today. My phone is very clean and I have an OtterBox case on it. I never use the headphones. I did go to the beach earlier in the day and at first wondered whether I might have inadvertently gotten some sand into the phone although as I said above I do have a pretty good case and I am very conscientious about where I leave and how I use the phone. I tried all of the suggestions on this page. But with no success. It occurred to me that the only thing unusual during the day was at the phone would've been exposed to more heat than normal. I then put the phone in the freezer for 15 minutes. When I came out it was fixed! Can't swear this was not a coincidence but I feel like based on the above it was probably the freezer that fixed it. Not sure Apple would approve but it certainly beats sending the phone in for repair :-)

Happened to me today, iPhone 6 iOS 9.2.1 - after the previous steps (resets, toothpicks, compressed air, etc.) did not resolve the issue, used 'find iPhone' from www.icloud.com to force the device to play a sound. Once the sound played, the iPhone was no longer stuck in headphone mode.

THANK YOU. This just happened to me today (seems not very coincidental that this happened to us all at once). I just logged in to icloud on my laptop, used find my iphone, made it play the sound, and my phone is unstuck from headphones mode. THANKS!

oomgosh, I tried EVERYTHING but none worked. I was just tired so my last option was to just take it to Apple Store and just get a new one. then I came across one comment which the person said they turned to airplane mode for about 3 hours. So I just turned mine to airplane mode for overnight and it finally worked. Thank goodness

HI ive just had this problem for a few hours and tried literally every solution that every person has given.. The one that worked for me was this..

go on to settings/general/accessibility/call audio routing.

have someone call you

turn on speaker

turn off speaker

plug headphones in

plug headphones out

problem solved!

saved me having to go to a Apple Store. Many thanks!!!

This has happened to me before. I used a Q-Tip to clean out the inside of the headphone port, and then it worked fine. (I did not wet it or anything and had to use scissors to shave it down a little to get it to fit in the headphone port.)

Dropped my iPhone 6s into toilet 5 hours before solving the ringer/headphone issue. My iPhone was covered with rice 4 hours of this time and before that I tried to shake all the excess water out of the phone against a tissue.

Having tried all tricks in this thread (reboot, airplane mode, voiceover, changing ringtone & adjusting volume, q-tip/cotton bud, call with speaker+headphones, blow drying, erasing network settings), I was pretty much left with hardware reset & iOS reinstall. However, I decided to try forced reboot by pressing power and home buttons. After turning the phone back on the problem was gone. Go figure.

Had a similar situation on my son's iPhone 6 Plus. I repair Smartphones professionally although not Apple certified. Had the same issue but no software adjustments worked. Therefore the issue was hardware related. Turns out the issue was in pocket lint that worked it's way into the speaker jack. You need to open the phone and blow compressed air on the speaker jack from the inside of they phone. If you blow compressed air in from the jack opening you are only forcing the blockage deeper into the jack. Once the lint is removed the phone should function fine again.

Patrick I hope this has worked for you and is fixed already, but anyone else reading this, the quick fix seems to match up with what Windows users have learned a long time ago. "When in doubt, restart."

Except in this case, it's not just powering down your phone. You need to press and hold the home button and power button at the exact same time (like you're about to take a screenshot, except don't let go right away) and keep holding it for approximately 10 seconds. At that point your screen will go black. Wait a few seconds, press and hold the power button and the phone will power up again. This is considered a "hard restart". It fixed the problem immediately on my phone. For reference, I have the iPhone 6s Plus.

Good luck everyone. And PS... It's a good idea to do a hard restart every few months or so. It clears up any excess data, or cookies left behind by all the apps or websites, etc. I learned this trick from a friend of mine's son who works at the Apple Store. I had a problem with the iPad it froze up and wouldn't start up, from the powered down state, I pressed and held the home and power buttons at the same time, and it worked. This is something that unfortunately we don't all know about.