Possible Solutions for Broken Sound On Your iPhone

   No ratings yet.
Kelly Heffner Wilkerson

Categories: iPhone | View Comments

It's about time I write a post about this: All of the sudden your iPhone volume is muted, and you're not sure why. It happens to the best of us — I've helped myself, my husband, my family, and my friends with this problem, and I honestly still am not sure of the cause.

I'm using this article as a place to collect up possible fixes for the sound no longer working on an iPhone. If you stumble on this article looking for help, PLEASE let us know if any of these worked for you. Better yet, let us know your situation if none of them worked for you, because we'd love to help you get it fixed and add a solution to our list.

I believe the root of this problem is due to the (well-intentioned) multiple "kinds" of sound in iOS. There are separate volume settings for videos, games, the ringer, and for headphones, and I think that one of the sound settings becomes botched and pollutes them all. So without further ado, here are my suggestions for things to try if your sound isn't working on your iPhone:

  • Make sure that the iPhone mute toggle switch (on the left-side of the iPhone, above the volume buttons) is not toggled to on. Flip the switch back and forth to ensure that it's fully in the off position (no orange showing.) You should see a notification on the iPhone screen as you toggle the switch as well.

  • Open a movie/video and turn up the volume to a reasonable level.

  • Open a game and turn up the volume to a reasonable level.

  • On the home screen, turn up the volume to a reasonable level for the ringer.

  • If you've recently used headphones, plug in the headphones again. Adjust the volume, remove the headphones and make sure the screen reacts and shows you that the headphones have been removed.

  • Reboot the iPhone, either by holding the top button until the power switch appears, or by holding the top button and home button at the same time for a few seconds until the phone power-cycles itself.

  • If you use an Apple TV, open a video/movie and see if you're still sending sound to the Apple TV by making sure you're sending your movie output to the iPhone. When I used to watch videos on the Apple TV with my son, this was frequently the fix for me.

  • If you connect your car to a GM car via Bluetooth, this newer post of ours may be related to your iPhone sound problems.

Again, if none of these fixes helped you, please leave us a comment. We genuinely want to help you resolve your iPhone volume problem so that we can make this post as comprehensive as possible.