You drop your phone in the sink, fish it out, and now every call sounds like it’s coming from inside a pillow. That muffled crackle is water trapped behind the speaker grille, and this shortcut is the trick for getting it out without poking anything into the holes.
What this shortcut does
Water Eject plays a low-frequency tone through your iPhone speaker for several seconds. The sound waves vibrate the speaker membrane hard enough to push trapped droplets back out through the grille, the same idea Apple built into the Apple Watch for its own water-lock feature. Independent write-ups peg the tone at around 165 Hz running for roughly twelve to fifteen seconds, which is low enough that you’ll feel it more than enjoy it. With close to half a million downloads, it’s one of the most-used versions of this trick on iOS.
Getting it set up
- Tap Add Shortcut on this page to open it in the Shortcuts app.
- Review the actions if you want, then scroll to the bottom of the preview.
- Confirm with Add Shortcut, and it lands in your library ready to run.
Running the shortcut
Crank your volume to the top first, because a quiet tone won’t move much water. Then tap the Water Eject tile in your library, or say “Hey Siri, run Water Eject” if your hands are still damp. The tone plays, the speaker buzzes, and you’ll often see a few beads of water surface on the grille. Wipe them off with a soft cloth. One pass clears most splashes, but a proper dunking might need two or three runs back to back before the sound goes fully crisp again.
Common questions
Is this actually safe for my speaker?
It’s the same vibration principle Apple uses on the Apple Watch, so the hardware is built to handle it. Keep the volume sensible and don’t loop it for minutes on end and your speaker will be fine.
I ran it and nothing came out — now what?
Check that your volume was maxed and your iPhone wasn’t on silent, then run it two or three more times. If audio is still muffled after that, the water may have reached deeper internal parts, and that’s a job for Apple Support rather than a tone.
There’s a Water Eject app now too?
The original creator turned this shortcut into a native app called Water Eject: Speaker Fix, with guided modes and frequency controls. This classic shortcut here still works and stays free, so you only need the app if you want the extras.
