Water eject
Press start. The tool plays a low tone around 165 Hz that drives the speaker cone through its full travel, breaking the surface tension holding water against the grille and pushing it out. Keep the speaker pointing down while it runs.
A sustained low tone that vibrates the driver hard enough to break the surface tension of trapped water and push it out of the grille.
Turn your volume all the way up, then press start.
- Take the case off and turn Bluetooth off.
- Raise the volume to maximum with the side buttons.
- Hold the phone with the speaker facing down.
- Run the tone, wipe the grille, then repeat if it still sounds muffled.
Why a wet speaker sounds muffled
Almost nobody with a wet phone actually has a broken speaker. What they have is a working speaker with water in front of it.
The driver behind your speaker grille is a few millimetres across. It makes sound by moving a membrane back and forth very quickly against air. Water in the chamber is roughly eight hundred times denser than air, so even a film of it acts like a weight bolted to the cone. The membrane still moves, just not as far and not as fast. High frequencies disappear first, which is exactly why a wet phone sounds like it is playing from inside a bag rather than sounding broken.
Get the water out and the sound comes straight back, usually within seconds. Nothing needed repairing.
Getting the most out of a cycle
The tone does the loosening, but four things determine whether the water actually leaves:
- Volume at absolute maximum. This is the single biggest factor. Cleaning power comes from how far the cone travels, and travel scales with volume. At half volume you are barely moving the water at all. Use the physical side buttons, and on Android check that the media slider is up rather than the ringtone one.
- Case off, grille down. A case creates a pocket that catches ejected water and holds it right back where it came from.
- Bluetooth disconnected. If your car, watch or earbuds are still paired, the tone plays there instead — and you will sit there wondering why nothing is happening.
- Wipe between runs. Water that has been pushed onto the outside of the grille will wick straight back in if you leave it. Dab it with a dry cloth or the corner of a t-shirt after each cycle.
What you should notice
On a phone with real water in the speaker, the first few seconds of the tone often sound crackly, rattly or distorted. That is the sound of the cone hitting water. As the water clears, the tone smooths out into a clean hum. That change is the most reliable sign the cycle is working — far more reliable than looking for visible droplets, which only appear if there was a lot of water to begin with.
If the tone sounds clean and steady from the very first second, there probably is not much water in there. In that case the problem is more likely dust, and Dust Removal is the better mode.
Do not charge a wet phone. Water in the charging port plus current is how ports corrode and how boards die. Modern phones will usually refuse to charge and show a moisture warning — that alert is doing you a favour, so do not use the override.
If water eject does not clear it
Run three or four cycles. If the sound is still wrong after that, the problem is probably not sitting in the speaker chamber:
- Give it time. Moisture elsewhere inside the phone can keep things sounding dull for a day. Leave it somewhere dry with decent airflow — not in a sealed bag, not in rice, not on a radiator.
- Check it is not dust. If the phone has been getting quieter for months and the water is coincidental, run Dust Removal instead.
- Test the other speaker. Use the speaker test to check each channel. If only one side is affected, it is that driver specifically.
- Look for physical symptoms. Buzzing, crackling at low volume or complete silence all point to hardware, and no amount of tone will change that.
Device-specific notes
The method is the same everywhere, but the volume controls and grille layout differ: iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Android, iPad, AirPods, earbuds, laptops and Bluetooth speakers.
Frequently asked questions
How fast should I run water eject after the phone gets wet?
As soon as it is safe to. Water that has just gone in is still sitting loose on the mesh and moves out easily. After a few hours it settles into the chamber and starts leaving mineral residue as it evaporates, which is much harder to shift.
Will water eject work if my phone is waterproof rated?
Yes, and this is exactly the case it is designed for. An IP67 or IP68 phone keeps water out of the electronics but the speaker grille is an opening by necessity — sound has to get out. So water sits in the speaker chamber of a perfectly healthy waterproof phone, which is why it sounds muffled even though nothing is damaged.
I ran it and water came out, but it still sounds bad. Now what?
Wipe the grille, wait 30 seconds and run it again. Most phones need two or three cycles. If it is still muffled after four runs, leave the phone somewhere dry and airy for a few hours — moisture elsewhere in the chamber needs to evaporate — then try once more.
Does it matter which way I hold the phone?
Yes, more than most people expect. Hold the speaker grille facing straight down. The tone loosens the water and gravity carries it out. Holding the phone flat or grille-up means you are shaking water around inside the chamber instead of out of it.
My phone went in the sea or a swimming pool. Should I use this?
Run it, but do not expect it to be enough. Salt and chlorine leave corrosive deposits once the water evaporates, and those deposits keep eating at the contacts. Rinse the outside with a little clean fresh water first, run the tone, then get it looked at professionally.
Is this the same as the Apple Watch water lock?
Same principle, different delivery. The Apple Watch fires a burst of low-frequency tone through its speaker to clear the case when you unlock it. This tool does the same thing from a web page, so you can use it on any device rather than only a watch.