iPhone is stuck in headphone mode

I had never used headphones when this happened to me. After trying everything, my husband saw one person who said to do a hard reset while simultaneously holding down the volume up and down buttons. Worked immediately. I would definitely recommend this to anyone before poking and prodding at your iPhone. It's super easy and worked like a charm! I hope this helps someone! :)

Thank you. I tried this test and it worked pretty well. I used a small piece of cotton instead of paper clip and slide it in and out using a small stick along with playing music. Trying it for 4-5 times, I observed music was paused and then realized the headphone signed went away and I started seeing volume sign back again.

I just fixed this problem by doing a hard reset. A hard reset is when you hold down the power button and the home button at the same time(like a screenshot, but holding them down). After holding both down for a few seconds, the screen will go black and then your phone will turn on. Turn the ringer on, and it should say "ringer" instead of "headphones".

My phone was also stuck on head phones mode... I tried every thing! Then I read a reply that said to try turning it on airplane mode for 15 minutes and once I turned it off of airplane mode it worked perfectly!!

I had this problem and spent hours and tried everything.. finally my husband stumbled upon one post that said to do a hard reset while holding down the volume up and down buttons. This was the only thing that worked for me, and I literally tried everything else! So to break it down, you'll need to hold, all at the same time, VOLUME UP + VOLUME DOWN + HOME BUTTON + POWER BUTTON. HOLD ALL DOWN FOR ABOUT TEN SECONDS, UNTIL YOUR SCREEN GOES BLACK AND THE APPLE ICON APPEARS ON YOUR SCREEN. Once you have done this, and the Apple icon is on your screen, you can let go of all the buttons, and when your iPhone has finished rebooting, the issue should be resolved. I hope you didn't do what many people have suggested, such as aggressively poking your headphone port with a paper clip etc. This can easily damage your phone permanently! I posted this response on several threads in the forum, because it was very hard for me to find, and I risked damaging my phone trying other people's advice! I hope this helps!

Hi, congrats ! There seems to be several ways to solve this problem and only one of them worked for you...!

It would help if you could be specific as what you did to resolve it ?

Most of the suggested actions help to straighten out the kink in the s/w and then operate correctly !

Buddy your idea work like a wonder. My 1yr old ****** on the phone and it started behaving in a strange way. Then Tried calling Apple support to fix a similar issue in vain. Ear buds cleaning disnthe magic. Thanks a ton!

Hi ... Thank u so much for sharing this information.

Recently my iPhone 6 too got struck in the Headphone mode . I almost tried out all the Ways mentioned in these discussions . But nothing worked . There was no dust in my headphone jack. Then the problem is that I had been using some other brand headphones other than Apple headphones . Even though your iPhone supports other headphones , sometimes it gets struck in the headphone mode .

So I plugged my Apple headphones and started playing some songs , then unplugged my headphone , so that now it plays in speaker . I did this repeatedly. Initially it was switching back to headphones mode , even when the headset is unplugged . But when u repeat this for many times , and do a hard reset of ur iPhone .

OMG it works now :-)

So please try the following steps :

1) Play some song with the headphones unplugged. Since ur phone is struck in headphone mode , u will not hear any sound from the speaker.

2) Plug in ur Apple headphone. Now u can hear the song in ur headphones.

3) Unplug the headphone . Now it will play in ur Speakers.

If it goes back again to Headphone mode , Plug and Unplug ur headphones many times .

4) Do a Hard reset of ur IPhone .

Now ur phone will stay in Ringer Mode .

P.S: please avoid using other brand headphones with ur iPhone . Most of the times , this will cause ur iPhone to get struck in headphone mode .

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!

So I had this issue and did ALL the tricks on youtube. ALL of them DID NOT work. But this did work. You can follow all the steps he did but what I did was a bit more basic. I went to Setting/General/Accessibility/audio routing -set speaker.

Then I used gmail to call myself but I'm sure you can have someone just call you. It should answer in speaker mode. (Having someone call YOU is important because I called someone and this did not work.)

When you answer the phone and its on speaker mode hit the home button and go to podcasts or Spotify or anything that play sounds(I used podcast) then while the phone is still on the call in speaker mode play something and you should hear it on the speaker simutaniously as the phone call. then while its playing the audio hang up on the phone call.

This was the only thing that worked. I was so excited that I actually signed up for an account after 10 years with an iPhone just to post this.

Hope this helps.

The first suggestion with Siri WORKED!!! My phone fell on water and at first I thought the speaker was blown and then I swiped up and saw that headphones was still engaged when they weren't plugged in I powered on and off, reset my phone. Put the headphone jack in and took it out 8-10 times and tried the calling thing. But Siri most definitely worked. Thank you so much for that suggestion.

This worked for me on my iPhone6s-Plus. I tried cleaning the jack and the phone call with speaker on-off and plugging the earphones in first and it did not work, but the RESET of the NETWORK Settings worked on the first try.

DUDE THANK U SO MUCH I TRIED THIS METHOD BEFORE BUT I GUESS I DIDN'T DO IT RIGHT AND IT FINAAAAAALLLY WORKED OMG THANK U SO MUCH, GOD BLESS YA'LL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

update: what worked was calling yourself (i used the home phone method like other ppl did) and then clicked on speaker and unclicked speaker and then plugged in my headphones and unplugged and then played around with the switches !!!! (ringer/silent) on the side of ur phone- im guessing thats the difference and frick im so happY YALL USE THIS

Hello, all having this issue, try this, as it worked for me (i6s+):

Step 1 / Dry method: remove some 30-50% of the cotton from the tip of a cotton tip, stuff it inside the headphone jack and rotate the cotton tip so inserted for a minute or so, finishing by gently yanking the cotton tip sideways (horizontal motion, to try to release the micro-pins inside the headphone jack that are "tricking" the port into "thinking" a headphone jack is inside); if this does not work, make sure all dirt was removed, before going to suggested step 2 below, confirm the cotton tip comes out clean.

This procedure did not fix the issue, though it left the headphone jack cleaner. So, I risked and tried as follows (I suppose that it may wreck your phone, rendering it useless, especially if you apply too much WD-40):

Step 2 / Wet method: remove dry cotton tip, prepare a clean cotton tip as suggested in step 1 and apply WD-40 to it, repeat cleaning procedure in step 1 and wait, up to 2 hours or so. Worked fine with me.

Good luck to all!

I tried everything in this thread and the only thing that worked was taking a hair dryer and blow drying the headphone jack for 3-5 minutes while the phone was off. Then let the phone cool down and turn it back on.

Turn off your phone and leave it off for several minutes. THEN: hold the power button until the Apple logo appears on the screen; continue to hold the button for a second or two and then let go. When you log in after complete start up, no more headphone problem! Good luck