It's no secret that modern phones are no longer gadgets for making calls, they're personal computers. From your iPhone you can make calls, send messages, browse the Internet, listen to music on headphones and much more. Software developers are trying to make our lives easier by simplifying the management of the iPhone, but at the same time adding new functions to it, this situation is constantly balancing on the brink of the maximum possible functionality of the gadget and the intuitiveness of managing complex functions. To prevent a person from getting completely confused, many trivial actions are done automatically. For example, if you connect headphones to your iPhone, it will automatically start playing audio and calls in the headphones, as soon as you unplug the headphones, the iPhone will understand this and start outputting music, alerts and calls to its own speaker again.
Everything would be fine, but in rare cases, such automation malfunctions and when you disconnect the headphones from the iPhone, it continues to be in headphone mode, and in this case you are left without sound at all.
What to do? How to disable headphone mode on iPhone if headphones are already disabled?
Reasons why the automatic shutdown of headphone mode in iPhone fails
In order to cope with a problem, you need to understand its cause and essence. If you have been connecting and disconnecting headphones from an iPhone for a long time, which automatically recognized this, and the last few times it stopped turning off the headphone mode, then something went wrong: either a software glitch occurred or a hardware error occurred.
- I scoured the entire Internet, both Russian-language and bourgeois, and wrote down all the main reasons why people did not turn off the headphone mode on their iPhone even after disconnecting them:
- A software glitch occurred when you disconnected the headphones from the phone;
- The iPhone processor was maximally loaded with some background task and ignored turning off the headphones;
- The poor quality of the headphones resulted in a violation of the automatic shutdown of the headphones;
- Problems with the connector on the iPhone;
- Foreign objects getting into the headphone jack;
- Water entering the device;
High indoor humidity.
Above, I outlined the main reasons why automatic headphone mode shutdown may stop working on your iPhone. Now let's figure out how to solve each of the above problems. In 90% of cases, one of the solutions works and you don’t have to take your phone to a service center. However, I want to warn you that if the problem occurs once, it may happen again in the near future. If the problem begins to appear regularly, and even if it is solved by one of the methods suggested below, I strongly recommend taking the iPhone to a service center to radically correct the problem. It’s like with health, if your back starts to hurt, then you shouldn’t rely on different ointments that treat the symptoms and not the problem. To cure your back or find out the cause of the pain, you must consult a doctor, the same with technology and iPhones.
Headphone mode won't turn off due to iPhone software glitch
If for some reason you have reason to suspect the phone software is the reason why the headphone mode in the iPhone did not automatically turn off, you need to do the following:
- Disconnect headphones and restart iPhone
If the reason was in the software, then there is a very high probability that after a normal reboot everything will return to normal. If after rebooting the headphone mode still works, although the headphones themselves are turned off, you should perform the following operations.
- Connect the charger to the iPhone and restart the phone again. Please note that the charger must be connected to the mains.
If this manipulation does not help, and you are 100% sure that the software was the cause of the failure, you have only one solution left.
- Connect the charger to your iPhone and do a Hard Reset, i.e. return your phone to factory default. This means that all your data, contacts, SMS and everything else will be deleted from the phone, and it will become the same as it was when you turned it on for the first time after purchase. Please note that this is the most radical method and I advise you to resort to it only if you are 100% sure that the problem is in the software and only if none of the other methods of disabling headphone mode helped.
Headphone mode on iPhone won't turn off due to moisture getting inside the phone
Quite often it happens that moisture gets inside the iPhone, even a small amount of it is enough to cause problems with the phone.
For example, you get caught in the rain, and you need to look up the route, transport schedule, or take a phone call. It would seem that you took the phone out of your pocket or bag for just a few minutes, quickly did your business and put it back, but one drop of water managed to get into the audio jack. This is enough to cause problems with the headphone mode on the iPhone under certain circumstances.
- So, you suspect that the headphone mode has started to fail due to moisture getting into either the iPhone itself or the audio jack. There are several ways to solve this problem: First of all, you need to dry your phone.
- If you have the opportunity to use a vacuum cleaner or hairdryer, this is the best solution. So, remove the attachments from your vacuum cleaner or hair dryer so you are left with a bare tube. Turn on the vacuum cleaner and bring the iPhone audio jack to the pipe, hold the phone there for a couple of minutes so that the air flow can evaporate the water inside the audio jack. Then try connecting and disconnecting the headphones again. If the cause was water, then this method should help. If you have a hairdryer, you need to do the same thing, but with a slight difference. Set the hairdryer to cold air; there is no need to warm up the phone with a stream of hot air. Do not turn on the hair dryer at maximum power, this will not help. Turn on the hairdryer in the “cold air” mode at minimum power and start blowing into the audio jack for one minute, then try to insert and remove the headphones. If you don’t have access to household appliances, you can use dry rice.
If you have table salt and a paper napkin, it is better to wrap your phone in the napkin and place it in the salt.
Remember that when using salt, the phone must be protected from direct contact with salt using gauze, a napkin or other material that will allow moisture to pass through, but will not allow the iPhone to come into direct contact with the salt.
Headphone mode in iPhone does not turn off due to mechanical contamination of the audio jack
If you suspect that the reason for not turning off the headphone mode on your phone may be simple contamination of the audio jack, then this is easy to fix.
- Remember - contacts must be cleaned carefully and carefully, they are quite fragile and bend easily. There is no need to press or bend them too much; light touches should be enough if the problem of not turning off the headphone mode on the iPhone really lies in dirty contacts. To remove dirt from the contacts inside the audio jack, you will need a regular toothpick.
- Take a regular wooden toothpick and any bright flashlight. Shine a flashlight inside the audio jack so that you can see the contacts inside. Gently try to remove dirt from the contacts using a toothpick. Usually, a few movements are enough for the contacts to restore normal operation. If this doesn't help, move on to the next step. You will need a toothpick or match, a piece of cotton wool and alcohol.
Lightly moisten cotton wool with alcohol and wrap it around a match or toothpick. Now try to clean the contacts inside the audio jack with this cotton wool. Of course, there should be a little cotton wool so that the toothpick can make translational movements inside the audio jack. You should not fill the connector with alcohol; just a small drop applied to cotton wool will suffice.
- Has your iPhone ever gotten stuck in headphone mode? The symptoms are obvious: you try to change the volume level and the small audio indicator displays "phone (headphones)" and no sound or speech can be heard through the standard speaker output. Some people talk about it like this: the iPhone speakers suddenly stopped working or that something broke, but this is actually quite rare and you can usually fix the problem very quickly without doing anything other than a Q-tip and a set of existing headphones ( yes, you read that right, you will use headphones to take your iPhone out of headphone mode). I ran into this today, and here's how I solved the problem in about a minute:
- Using compressed air (or mouth) we will blow directly into the headphone jack, because this can help to remove dust or any food item stuck in this jack;
- Take a cotton swab or toothpick and wrap it in a swab. Remove any remaining particles inside the port connector;
- Plug in your headphones, make sure there is full contact and make sure sound is transmitted through them, then carefully remove the headphones - the sound should work as normal.
- Plug and unplug the headphones a few more times if nothing happens the first time.
The iPhone should now work normally.
Toggle the volume up/down buttons should only show "phone" as intended, and the audio will play from the iPhone speakers as usual.
Why is this happening?
This could be due to a number of circumstances, maybe it's just a weird software quirk where the iPhone doesn't recognize that the headphones have been unplugged from the jack - which seems to be exacerbated by the use of some protective cases that become an obstacle to the audio jack, thus , which is why you should remove the stuck item before trying to do anything with the whole thing. It could even be something tangible stuck there, like say a piece of something tasty, so using air blowing technology and cleaning with a Q-tip solves the problem. Luckily, this is easy to fix in the vast majority of cases, although there are some situations where headphone mode freezes after the iPhone has had contact with water (which is probably why earlier iPhone models have water sensors in the headphone jack), but if Cleaning your iPhone properly after contact with water can usually save it from damage or any oddities of that kind. After helping a reader solve this problem a few weeks ago, and then finding myself face to face with it, I decided it was worth writing about. So if you find your iPhone speakers not working and the "(headphones)" message is just stuck with no hope of solving the problem despite your best efforts, try the above steps before calling Apple technical support, it may work for yours too. case.
Is your device stuck in “headphone mode” and only plays it when you plug in a headphone? In this article we have collected all the methods on how to disable headphone mode on iPhone 5, 6, 7, 8, X, SE; these methods are also suitable for iPad and iPod.
To get started, go to Settings, Sounds, and then Ringtone. Try playing different ringtones and see if your speakers work.
Make sure your battery is more than 30% charged. The problem may be related to insufficient power levels.
Finally, close all your open apps by double-tapping Home and expanding them to close each one individually. Then restart your iPhone.
Try connecting a Bluetooth earphone
Try connecting your device to a Bluetooth speaker or Bluetooth headphones, and then disconnect it. See if the headphone mode on your iPhone turns off when you unplug your headphones!
When you connect your iPhone to a Bluetooth device, you can exit “headphone mode.” To do this, first turn on Bluetooth (Control Center or through Settings).
After connecting to the Bluetooth speaker, play the song. While playing a song, turn off the Bluetooth setting on your phone. This will correct the device error.
Check some settings
A setting called "Call Audio Routing" determines where audio is heard during phone and audio calls.
So let's check the settings. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and scroll down to the Interaction section. Keep scrolling until you find the call. It should be on "Automatic". If it's not, tap it and select Automatic from the list.
If Automatic is already selected, try setting it to Speaker. Now test it by making a FaceTime call or audio call. If the speaker works, then go back to the same setting and change it to “Automatic”.
Switching this setting mode can help disable headphone mode on iPhone and iPad.
Try turning on airplane mode
Switch to "airplane mode". Go to Settings > Airplane Mode and turn it on. Wait 15 minutes or more and then turn it off and check if your speakers are working.
Turn off your headphones
If the iPhone is in headphone mode without headphones connected, then there may be debris or dirt in the headset port. To remove them, disconnect and then reconnect the headphones several times (at least 7-8 times). After that, restart your iPhone (by pressing and holding the Home and Power buttons.) On iPhone 7 and iPhone 8, X you can restart
Some users reported that they fixed this problem by using a hair dryer. You can also use a toothpick or Q-Tip to clean the port to remove any remaining dirt. To use the Q-Tip, make sure you remove most of the cotton so that it fits snugly against the port without getting stuck in it. Using the Q-Tip inside the socket, make a few turns to clear the port.
If you decide to use a hair dryer, make sure it is on the cool setting or low setting.
Be sure to turn off your phone before taking any of the steps listed above.
Blow into the headphone jack
Before blowing air into the iPhone's headphone jack, take a flashlight and see if there is anything inside. If you notice something, pull it out. Now gently and carefully blow air directly into the headphone jack. This should remove any small particles.
Try a spray bottle. It is commonly used to clean computer keyboards and other electronics. Luckily, the little plastic straw mount fits perfectly into the headphone jack.
Check to see if your audio is back to normal.
A few of our readers even used a small vacuum cleaner to clean out the headphone jack (and it worked). Just be very careful.
Use dry wipes for cleaning
As already mentioned, this problem with iPhone usually occurs when the headphone jack is damaged or there is a large accumulation of debris. Therefore, it is necessary to clean the headphone jack properly. Take a cotton cloth and clean the hole several times. Make sure that when cleaning the connector you do not expose it to water.
Some users find that a toothbrush helps clean dirt and dust from the headphone jack. It is necessary to clean with a light touch, you can add a little alcohol (Do not add water or vodka). Make sure your phone is turned off before inserting any instrument into the headphone jack.
Another option is to make your own cleaning brush using a paper clip and clear tape. Bend the paperclip straight and wrap the end of the paperclip with the sticky side of the tape facing out. Gently insert the sticky tip into the headphone jack, pressing lightly from the side to pick up dust and dirt. Don't forget to turn off your phone before you start doing this.
What to do if your iPhone thinks it's wearing headphones?
What to do if your iPhone thinks it's wearing headphones?
iPhone can only hear sound through headphones (Solution)
THE IPHONE THINKS IT'S IN HEADPHONES WHAT TO DO
You can also roll a small piece of tape inside out, with the sticky side facing out. Carefully insert the tape into the headphone jack port and squeeze it from the side. Leave long ends for easy removal.
In addition, there is a small hole on the inside of the connector where dirt and dust often gets stuck. Try cleaning it with a pin and a little alcohol. This should help remove headphone mode on iPhone and iPad.
Check for water damage
The headphone jack is one of the most vulnerable areas of the iPhone and can be damaged unknowingly. If you like to run or exercise while listening to your favorite tracks, there is a chance that sweat may get into the headphone jack.
Even if it was in your pocket at the time. To resolve this issue, try checking your device for water damage. You can always use silica gel desiccants on your phone or other adsorbents.
Lost sound on iPhone 6? Problem and Solution!
No sound on iPhone, what should I do?
What to do if your iPhone has no sound?
Lost sound on iPhone? Problem and Solution!
No sound on iPhone 7 SOLUTION!
Try turning on some music or another application
First, connect your headphones, open iTunes and play any song. Wait for the iPhone screen to automatically lock. Then unlock it, close iTunes by double-clicking it and expanding it up, and disconnect the headphones. Open YouTube, Pandora, Spotify or another app and play some music.
Set the volume to maximum and check if the speakers are working. If yes, then go to other applications and make sure that the sound works in them too.
This is one of those expert tips that basically works to fix the headphone mode on iPhone 6. To begin with, play a song on your phone and let your phone lock itself automatically while playing.
Now connect your headphones to your device and open it. Manually stop playing the song and disconnect the headphones. This will allow your phone to exit "headphone mode".
Also read:
Update to stable iOS version
There may also be a problem with your version of iOS. Therefore, it is highly recommended to update it. This will also solve any other problem with your device. 
Go to Settings > General > Software Update and Download and install the new iOS update on your device.
Reset all settings on your iPhone
For some users, rebooting the smartphone is enough. If all the above solutions didn't work, this method may help. Will delete all existing settings on your phone.
Simply go to Settings > Reset > Reset All Settings and confirm your password. Your phone will reset and restart normally. Can you easily restore the firmware using an iPhone application?
Did these methods help you turn off headphone mode on your iPhone? If not, try the tips that are collected from different forums.
Tips from users who encountered a problem
A user reports that the problem where the iPhone is stuck in headphone mode has disappeared. After he finished the iCloud backup, he found that the problem of being stuck in headphone mode on iPhone and iPad disappeared. If you create a backup via iTunes, it may also work for this backup method.
Tips for readers:
- Call someone with headphones on and press speaker. Once you hang up, turn your iPhone on Silent, then turn it off.
- For iPhone 7 and other models without headphone jacks, try plugging the charger back into your iPhone and then unplugging it. Repeat if necessary.
- Use air by spraying it into the headphone jack or port while pressing both volume controls at the same time.
- A simple solution is to turn on the mute button and press the volume buttons. Don't forget to turn off the mute button.
- Open the Apple Voice Memos app and record a new voice. This may also solve the problem.
- Try a FaceTime call. Be patient as you won't hear sound for 10-30 seconds, but stay on the call. The speaker will then turn on and the phone will exit "headphone mode".
Phone 5 sound only works in headphones
The iPhone 6 displays an icon in the status bar that says headphones are connected to it, but does not make any sounds. But in reality, no headphones are connected. Neither cable nor Bluetooth. I can't understand how to solve this problem. I turned my smartphone on and off, but it doesn't help!
Solution: Rebooting does quite often solve such problems and we always recommend trying this method first.
- Turn off Wi-Fi.
- Reboot your smartphone.
- This method helps most users.
If this does not give results, then the next step is to try cleaning the headphone jack using a regular toothpick. If there is dirt or debris inside, this could be the reason why the iPhone is behaving this way. You can also use compressed air to clean the port.
Try connecting and immediately disconnecting wired headphones. Repeat this action several times in a row and check again if the problem persists.
Before proceeding further:
- Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer. Update if necessary.
- Use iTunes to make a full backup of your iPhone. Transfer all the necessary information to your computer, as further actions will delete it from the smartphone’s memory.
- If your iPhone is running iOS 6 or later, go to Settings > iCloud and deactivate Find My iPhone.
In order to return the device to its original settings, do the following one by one:
- Connect your device to your PC using the original USB cable.
- In iTunes, find and open the control tab for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod.
- On the General page, click Restore.
- If a window appears warning you about deleting user data, confirm that you want to restore the device. iTunes will then begin downloading the latest software for your device and perform a factory reset when complete.
- Once the restore is complete, the device will reboot and you will see the Setup Assistant welcome screen. Go through all the steps to set up and activate your device. At one stage you will be offered a choice - set up the device as new or restore from a backup. If you are doing all these procedures with an iPhone, make sure that it has an active SIM card. You will need it to complete the activation procedure.
Let us know in the comments if you found this method useful for solving audio problems. If you experience similar problems, please describe them in the comments. We will try to find a solution and talk about it in detail in the following articles.
According to SquareTrade research, iPhones are the most reliable smartphones on the market. However, even Apple devices are prone to malfunctions. In some cases, after listening to music on an iOS device through headphones, the sound from the speakers completely disappears. Sometimes the device displays a volume icon that does not respond to changes in sound level. The problem is quite rare, but it does happen. For those who have encountered this for the first time, we offer instructions on how to restore the operation of the gadget.
Why does my iPhone think it has headphones connected when it doesn't?
The gist is this: you listen to music on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, take out your headphones and... system notifications, sounds, ringtones are no longer played through the built-in speaker. There may be several reasons, but the most common are the following:
- Failure occurred when removing the plug from the device.
- You turned off the headphones while the device was performing internal operations.
- You used headphones or a headset of poor quality.
- Problem with the 3.5mm jack.
Software or hardware problem
In fact, not only problems with hardware, but also a failure of the operating system can lead to such an incident. As practice shows, for the vast majority of victims, the problem manifested itself precisely because of a banal mistake. What can you do in this case:
Insert and remove the plug out of the nest headphones. There is a possibility that iOS did not have time to detect that the headphones were removed. If the user suddenly pulls out the plug, the system may continue to believe that they are still connected. Sometimes it is enough to insert and remove the headphones several times for the device to start working normally again.
Connect other headphones. This can really help. If the problem is with the connected accessory. Yes, yes, especially if it costs less than 300 rubles.
The problem of poor quality accessories isn't new, but to make sure it's not just your headphones, it's a good idea to try an alternative.
Restart device. A simple reboot of your device may solve your problem. Coupled with a Chinese headset and a glitch in the OS, it is quite possible that the smartphone will not understand what happened.
Check the headphone jack. If none of the methods above helped you, then it’s time to use the deduction method. What if something got into the iPhone's 3.5mm jack? Various contaminants can lead to short-circuiting of the contacts between the headphones and the smartphone. Take a flashlight and look inside. If something does get in there, you can use a toothpick or cotton swab to clean the connector.
Remember that everyone needs moderation. Pressing with all your might and scraping against the walls is also not the best option.
Restore or update iOS. If there are no problems with either the connector or the system, you can use a more radical method.
Try updating iOS from DFU mode. There is a chance that after the update everything will fall into place. Especially if you had any system tweaks installed.
Jailbreak?
Third-party software installed from an unofficial Apple store can lead to similar consequences, especially if the user installing the jail is a beginner. In this case, you can try to remove all used tweaks. And if it doesn't help, try the previous steps.
Service center
Unfortunately, if the methods described above did not lead to the desired result, then the last thing that can be recommended is to contact an authorized service center. You should not try to disassemble the device yourself, even if you are confident in your abilities. It often happens that violations are associated with damage to the printed circuit board after exposure to moisture. Some users have reported audio problems after their iPhone has been in water or had liquids spilled on it.
We hope that the above tips helped in eliminating this annoying problem. Remember that most problems with iPhone and iPad can be resolved quite simply.