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Fix iPhone Speaker
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Water removal sound

Any device with a speaker: phone, tablet, laptop, earbuds. Hold the wet grille facing down, volume to maximum, press Start. A 165 Hz tone pushes the water out in 45 seconds.

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Hold the phone speaker-down. Volume to maximum. Silent switch off.

  1. 1. Volume to max. iPhone: flip the silent switch to ring, or the tone is muted.
  2. 2. Speaker facing down. Gravity does half the work. Hold it over a towel.
  3. 3. Run 45 s, repeat. Works best while the speaker is still wet.

Why one sound works on every speaker

A speaker is a diaphragm on a coil in a magnet. Push it at its resonant frequency and it moves a long way for very little power; push it anywhere else and it moves less. Small speakers — phones, earbuds, watches — resonate somewhere in the low hundreds of hertz, which is why 165 Hz became the number: it sits near the sweet spot for the drivers most people are trying to dry, and it is low enough that the diaphragm makes big, slow shoves rather than a fast buzz. Water sits in a grille because of surface tension; a few hundred shoves a second break it, and gravity finishes the job.

That is the whole trick, and it is why the same tone shows up in the Apple Watch, in Samsung’s watches, in the speaker cleaner that OnePlus and Xiaomi put in Settings, and in every app that charges money for it.

Using the water removal sound, device by device

  • Phone. Headphones out, volume to maximum (iPhone: silent switch to ring; Android: the media volume), wet speaker facing the floor over a towel. Bottom speaker: phone upright. Earpiece: screen-down, top edge toward the floor.
  • Tablet. Same, but tablets often have four speakers along the edges. Point each wet edge down in turn and run the tone once per edge.
  • Laptop. Close anything else that plays audio, volume to full, then tilt the laptop so the speaker grille faces down — usually that means resting it open, upside down, on a towel. Laptop speakers are bigger and clear slower; give it three runs.
  • Earbuds. Connect them, turn off any volume limit and ear-detection setting, take them out of your ears, hold the wet bud mesh-down over a paper towel, run. Turn the settings back on before you wear them again.
  • Smartwatch. Use the built-in one. Apple Watch: Control Center, water-drop icon, turn the crown. Galaxy Watch: the water-lock tile.

What the sound will not remove

Water in a charging port: there is no diaphragm in a port. Unplug, tap the device port-down, leave it in moving air, charge wirelessly if you can. Water that got inside the body: the tone reaches the speaker mesh and nothing behind it — that is drying time and, for salt water, a repair shop. Dust and lint: sound does not move air. Loose dust may fall out; packed lint needs a brush. If the device is an iPhone that went properly under, how to fix a water damaged iPhone is the full first-day routine.

Whatever the device: three runs, then half an hour of air. More tone on a dry speaker does nothing useful.

Water removal sound — questions people ask

What is the water removal sound?
A low tone, 165 Hz on this page, played through a wet speaker to push the water out. At that frequency a small speaker diaphragm moves the furthest, and the movement breaks the surface tension holding droplets in the grille. It is the mechanism behind the Apple Watch Water Lock chirp and every “water eject” app or Shortcut.
Does the water removal sound work on a tablet or laptop?
Yes, with a caveat. Tablet and laptop speakers are larger, so their resonance is lower and 165 Hz moves them a little less, but it still moves them and the water still comes out. Hold the device so the wet grille faces down, volume to maximum, and give it two or three runs. Laptops: close every other app that could grab the audio output first.
Can I use it on a smartwatch or earbuds?
Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch already have this built in (Water Lock, and the “water eject” tile) — use those. For earbuds, the tone has to be sent to them over Bluetooth with the volume limit off and any ear-detection setting disabled, and they must be out of your ears for the whole run. It works, but read the earbud maker’s guidance on wet buds first; many say leave them out of the case to dry.
How long does the water removal take?
Each run is 45 seconds. Most speakers are clear after one or two; a stubborn one takes three. After that, stop and let the device air-dry for half an hour before trying again. Running a dry speaker at full volume for minutes on end is the only way this can do harm.
Will it remove water from a charging port or a microphone?
No to the port — nothing in it vibrates, so no sound reaches the water. Microphones are a maybe: the tone can shake a droplet off a mic mesh that sits next to the speaker, but it is a side effect, not the purpose. For ports, unplug, tap them facing down, and give them time in moving air.
Is this the same sound as the YouTube water removal videos?
Same idea, cleaner signal. YouTube videos are compressed audio, so the tone drifts and picks up artefacts, and the video keeps playing whatever comes next. This page generates the tone live with the browser’s oscillator, 165 Hz exactly, and stops after 45 seconds so you can test.