Speaker Cleaner: Water Eject Tone

How to play the water eject tone

1. Unplug the phone, turn off headphones and Bluetooth audio, and take off the case. If water is still dripping from it, wipe it and wait. If the phone was submerged, do not use this page: turn it off and let it dry.
2. Tick the box that says The phone is unplugged and not dripping, it was not submerged, and headphones and Bluetooth audio are off. Start stays disabled until you do.
3. Under Pattern, choose Low tone or Low sweep. They are two common patterns, and neither is known to work better.
4. Hold the phone at arm's length with the wet speaker grille tilted down, keep your fingers off the grilles, and press Start. Each run plays for 25 seconds, and Stop ends it at any time.
5. While the tone plays, raise the phone's own volume, and the Volume slider if needed, until you hear it clearly. Stop at once if the phone rattles, buzzes or gets warm.
6. When the run ends, play some audio to check the speaker. You can run it again; after 3 runs in a row, Start waits 60 seconds. If the sound stays muffled, let the phone air-dry and check it again later.

Can a sound eject water from a phone speaker?

A low tone may help push water droplets out of a phone's speaker grille, because the speaker's vibration can shake them loose, but no independent test shows how well it works, and water also clears as the phone dries. A tone cannot dry the inside of the phone, clear the charging port or the microphones, remove dust or lint, or repair water damage or a broken speaker.

What to do first when your phone gets wet

Unplug the phone, wipe it with a soft, lint-free cloth, and lay it speaker side down on the cloth so water in the grille can drip out. If it was submerged, turn it off and play no sound through it until it is dry.

For the charging port, Apple's liquid-detection alert page gives these steps for iPhone:

1. Tap the phone gently against your hand with the connector facing down.
2. Leave it in a dry area with some airflow.
3. Try charging with a cable after at least 30 minutes. Drying can take up to 24 hours.
4. Do not dry it with an external heat source or compressed air, do not put a cotton swab or paper towel in the connector, and do not put it in a bag of rice.

Dust or lint in the speaker?

Brush the speaker slots gently with a clean, dry, soft-bristled brush, and keep liquids and sprays off the grille. Avoid pins and other sharp objects, which can push lint further in or tear the mesh.

Sound is not a reliable way to remove dust or lint: there is no evidence that a tone shakes it out, so the page has no dust mode.

What the tone can and cannot help with

• Water droplets in the speaker grille: a phone speaker that sounds muffled or crackly after getting wet may sound clearer after one or more runs, with no guarantee.
• Water inside the phone, in the charging port or in the microphones: the tone cannot clear it, so let the phone air-dry. Once it is dry, the Microphone Test shows whether the microphone works.
• Dust, lint and pocket fluff: the tone cannot remove dust or lint. Use a soft, dry brush instead.
• A damaged speaker: no tone can repair it. If the sound stays rough or distorted once the phone is dry, check it with the Audio Distortion Test.
• Earbuds, headphones and laptops: the tone is not meant for them. Dry them the way their maker advises.

How it works

Low tone plays a 165 Hz sine wave in pulses, 350 ms on and 150 ms off, with 20 ms ramps so it does not click. Low sweep glides from 150 Hz to 300 Hz and back every 5 seconds. The Web Audio API schedules each 25-second run on the audio clock.

The mono tone has the same level in both channels: about −14 dBFS at the starting Volume of 40%, and about −6 dBFS at the top of the slider. Where the browser supports it, a screen wake lock keeps the screen on during a run.