Fix my speaker

A sustained low tone moves the diaphragm far enough to push water out. Turn the volume all the way up and point the speaker at the floor.

How to hold it

Speaker grille facing down, the phone tilted slightly, and a cloth or sheet of paper underneath. Gravity does half the work; the tone does the other half.

This is loud and low. Do not hold the speaker to your ear while it plays, and do not wear headphones.

Status

Mode —

Frequency 0 Hz

Elapsed 0.0 s

Tone frequency

165 Hz is what the Apple Watch uses and what works best on most phones. If your speaker is large, a lower tone moves more air; if it is tiny, a slightly higher one plays louder and pushes better.

Page volume 90%

Turn the device volume all the way up as well: amplitude is the entire mechanism. And take your headphones off — this has to play through the phone’s speaker.

This page cannot tell whether your speaker holds water or whether any came out — it only plays tones. The check is listening before and after.

Generated right here, in your browser. What you type never leaves your device.

Keep going with Speaker test Microphone test Decibel meter

You dropped your phone in water, fished it out, everything still works — and it sounds like it is talking to you through a pillow. It is not broken: there is water trapped in the speaker chamber, between the diaphragm and the grille, and that small amount of liquid is enough to damp the movement that produces the sound.

The fix is not drying the outside or burying it in rice. It is using the speaker itself as a pump: a low tone at high volume drives the diaphragm through the largest excursion it can manage, and that movement pushes the water out. It is exactly what an Apple Watch does when you unlock water mode and it makes that odd gurgling chirp.

What this page does and does not do: **it plays tones, it diagnoses nothing.** It cannot know whether your speaker holds water, how much, or whether any came out. That check is yours, by listening before and after. And if the speaker sounded wrong before it got wet, this will not fix that.

Manual

How to use it

1
Dry the outside first

With a cloth, without rubbing the grille. If the water was salt or pool water, rinse with fresh water first and dry it: salt and chlorine leave residue as they evaporate, and that residue genuinely damages a speaker.
2
Turn the volume all the way up

Amplitude is the entire mechanism. At half volume the diaphragm travels half as far and moves far less water. And take your headphones off: this has to play through the device’s own speaker.
3
Point the speaker at the floor

Gravity does half the work. Hold the phone grille-down, tilted slightly, with a cloth or a sheet of paper underneath to catch whatever comes out.
4
Play the ejection tone

Start with the sustained low tone. You should feel the vibration in your hand and, if there is water, see it emerge as small droplets within the first few seconds.
5
Repeat two or three times

One pass rarely clears everything. Between passes, shake the phone gently with the speaker facing down and dry the outside again before starting over.
6
Check by listening, not by looking

Play music you know well. If it still sounds dull or tinny, try the sweep, which covers a wider range of frequencies in case the water is sitting elsewhere in the chamber.

History

Where the idea came from

Ejecting water with sound reached the public with the Apple Watch Series 2 in 2016, the first one designed for swimming. It had an obvious problem: if you let water into the case so it can be submerged, it has to come back out afterwards, and you cannot ask the wearer to shake it dry.

The answer was to run the speaker in reverse, so to speak. Water Lock silences the screen while you swim, and releasing it by turning the crown makes the watch emit a series of loud low tones that push the water out of the cavity. That gurgling chirp everyone recognises is not an alert: it is the pump running.

The idea jumped from watch to phone through the back door. Phone makers never integrated it — Samsung hides it in a service menu, and Apple does not offer it on the iPhone — so apps and web pages appeared doing exactly the same thing: playing the right tone at maximum volume. The demand existed because phones started surviving water at precisely the moment they stopped sounding right afterwards.

Behind it sits a less visible design change. When phones took on IP ratings, the speaker was not sealed: it was given a mesh that repels water while passing air. That decision is what lets the device survive and simultaneously lets the water sit inside sounding wrong — and what turns a 165 Hz tone into a useful tool.

2016: Apple Watch Series 2 introduces sonic water ejection
100-200 Hz: where the diaphragm travels furthest
IPX7: one metre deep, thirty minutes

How it works

Why a sound moves water

A speaker is a diaphragm pushed back and forth by a coil sitting in a magnetic field. That movement compresses air, and that is the sound. The distance the diaphragm travels is called excursion, and it depends on two things: amplitude — the volume — and frequency. The lower the tone, the slower the cycle and the further the diaphragm gets on each pass.

That is the whole trick. A high tone moves the diaphragm thousands of times a second but over minute distances: it agitates the water without displacing it. A low tone at high volume runs the full travel, and that long excursion acts as a piston against water trapped in the chamber, pushing it towards the only exit there is — the grille.

This is why the useful range sits roughly between 100 and 200 Hz and not lower. Below 100 Hz the tiny speaker in a phone produces almost nothing: the diaphragm is too small to move that much air, so going lower gives no extra push, only less sound.

Water also leaves for a second reason that helps. Most water-resistant phones do not seal the speaker, because a sealed speaker makes no sound. What they use is a hydrophobic mesh that passes air and repels water. That mesh slows water getting in, but once it is in, it slows water getting out too — and that is exactly where a low tone’s shove makes the difference.

By hand

Without this page, and what not to do

The method works with any source of a low tone, and there are two popular remedies worth ruling out in writing.

1

Less effective than a pure tone, because the energy is spread across frequencies, but at full volume with the speaker facing down it does part of the job.
2

On an Apple Watch it is enabled from control centre and released by turning the crown. Same principle, built in at the factory.
3

It does not work, and the manufacturer advises against it. Grains and dust get into the ports, and rice does not draw water out of a sealed chamber.
4

Heat deforms adhesives and seals, and pressurised air drives water further in rather than out. A cloth and patience beat both.

Diagnosis

If something is not working

Symptom:Water came out but it still sounds muffled

Likely cause:: Water remains in the chamber, or more than one speaker is wet: most phones have two, the main speaker and the earpiece.
What to do:: Repeat the tone two or three more times, rotating the phone so each speaker faces down in turn. Then let it dry at room temperature for a few hours before judging the result.

Symptom:Nothing came out at all

Likely cause:: There may have been no water, or the volume was not at maximum, or you are playing over Bluetooth without realising.
What to do:: Confirm the sound is coming from the device speaker rather than connected headphones, turn the volume fully up, and try again with the phone properly tilted.

Symptom:The sound crackles or distorts during the tone

Likely cause:: It may be the water moving, which is normal and passes — or a damaged diaphragm, which is not.
What to do:: Stop, dry the device and try again in a few hours. If the distortion persists with the speaker completely dry, the damage is done and it is a repair job.

Symptom:The speaker is fine but the microphone is not

Likely cause:: Water gets into the microphone openings too, and those cannot be cleared by a tone because there is no diaphragm to push.
What to do:: Leave it face down for several hours without charging. To check whether it has recovered, record yourself and listen back — more reliable than judging from a call.

Symptom:It sounded bad again the next day

Likely cause:: Water was sitting in an internal cavity and has migrated into the speaker chamber as the device moved.
What to do:: Repeat the process and give it longer to dry this time, somewhere ventilated and away from direct heat. If it keeps recurring, more water got in than the grille can release.

Symptom:No tone plays at all

Likely cause:: The browser blocks audio until there has been a user gesture, or the phone is on silent via the side switch.
What to do:: Press the page’s play button — opening the page is not enough. And check the physical mute switch: on an iPhone it silences tones even with the volume at maximum.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

The X in IPX7 does not mean anything bad

In an IP rating the first digit covers solids and the second covers water. The X means the first was not tested, not that it offers no protection. IP68 declares both.

Rice does not work, and the manufacturer says so

Apple explicitly advises against putting an iPhone in a bag of rice: grains can damage the connector, and rice does not draw water out of the inside. The actual advice is patience, airflow, and not charging until it is dry.

Your water-resistant speaker is not sealed

It cannot be: a speaker has to move air to make sound. What it has is a porous hydrophobic membrane that passes air and repels liquid water. It is also the reason water, once inside, does not leave on its own.

Salt water is the real problem

Fresh water evaporates and leaves nothing. Sea and pool water leave salt and chlorine behind as they dry, and that residue corrodes the coil and stiffens the diaphragm. That is why the first step after the sea is a fresh-water rinse, not drying.

Water resistance expires

Seals and adhesives degrade with time, heat and drops. A three-year-old IP68 phone does not offer the protection it had on the day it left the factory — and no manufacturer covers liquid damage under warranty.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Does this actually work, or is it a gimmick?

It works, for a simple mechanical reason: the diaphragm pushes the water. It is the same mechanism Apple built into the Apple Watch in 2016. What it does not do is work miracles — it clears water trapped in the chamber, it does not repair an already damaged speaker.

Can it damage the speaker?

A low tone at full volume for a few seconds is well within what the speaker does every day playing music. What is worth avoiding is leaving it running at maximum for minutes on end: it adds nothing and heats the coil.

Which frequency is the right one?

Between 100 and 200 Hz is where a phone speaker’s diaphragm travels furthest. This page uses 165 Hz as the main tone, the same order of magnitude the Apple Watch uses, and offers a sweep in case the water is trapped elsewhere.

Does it work for headphones or a Bluetooth speaker?

For a Bluetooth speaker, yes, same procedure. For in-ear headphones, be careful: never wear them for this. Rest them on a towel with the output facing down and play the tone at high volume without bringing them near your ear.

What if my phone is not water resistant?

Then the speaker is the least of your problems. Switch it off, do not charge it, and let it dry for days before powering on. Corrosion on a wet board takes time to appear, and powering up wet is what accelerates it.

Does this page listen through my microphone?

No. It only generates sound with the Web Audio API; it never requests microphone permission and cannot tell how your speaker sounds. If you want to check by recording yourself, that is the microphone test, which does ask for permission and says so.

Does this also clean dust out of the speaker?

It helps, but they are not the same job. The vibration shakes loose whatever is sitting free in the grille, and often that alone brings the volume back. What it cannot do is lift dirt that is stuck. For that, use a dry soft brush — a toothbrush with no paste — stroking parallel to the grille, never pushing inwards. What not to use: compressed air, which drives the dirt onto the diaphragm, and anything with a point, which punctures it.

My speaker sounds crackly or distorted — will this fix it?

Probably not, because it is rarely water. Crackling that appears only at high volume is usually the file itself or the amplifier clipping; crackling that is there at low volume too means the diaphragm is damaged, and no tone repairs that. Try halving the volume first: if it disappears, the speaker is fine and what was wrong was the level.