For quiet or muffled calls
Help for the earpiece you hold to your ear on calls: what sound can reach, plus gentle hand cleaning for the rest.
Hold the phone away from your ear, earpiece facing down, then press Start.
Which speaker plays?
How does each range sound?
Listen for rattling, crackling or a range that drops out. Many phones have a single loudspeaker, so left and right may both come from the same place.
Browsers send sound to the phone’s main loudspeaker. Whether the earpiece plays too depends on the phone:
Not sure which you have? Open the speaker test, play Left and Right, and hold the top of the phone near your ear. If you hear the tone there, your earpiece is a speaker.
Earpiece grilles collect skin oil and makeup as well as dust, so a brush does a lot of the work.
Use the speaker test as described above to see if your earpiece plays sound.
If it does, hold the phone with the earpiece facing down, away from your ear, and press Start.
Brush the slot gently with a soft, dry toothbrush to lift oil and lint.
Call someone or your voicemail and listen at normal volume.
If the earpiece looks clean, check these before booking a repair.
Brush across the slot rather than into it.
Press it on the outside of the grille and lift straight off.
The cleaning tone is loud. Never hold it against your ear while it plays.
Pins and toothpicks can tear the fine mesh.
It can seep through and damage the earpiece.
Compressed air pushes debris further in.
Music usually plays from the bottom loudspeaker, while calls use the earpiece. A clogged earpiece mesh, a covered slot or Bluetooth routing are the usual causes.
Yes, used in Gentle mode and held away from your ear. The earpiece is small, so avoid Deep clean on it.
Only on phones that use the earpiece as a stereo speaker. On others the tone plays from the bottom speaker only.
Restart the phone and test with Bluetooth off and no case. If it’s still quiet, the earpiece may need replacing.
All cleaning modes in one tool: water eject, dust shake, deep clean and more.
165 Hz pulses that push water out of a wet speaker.
Sweeping tones that shake loose lint and dust.
Check left and right channels and sweep 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
Steps and fixes for every iPhone with a bottom speaker.
Galaxy S, A, Z Fold and Flip, with vibration assist.
MacBook and Windows laptop speakers and grilles.
Rotating bass bursts for stubborn muffling.
Any frequency from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, four waveforms.
Pixel, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Vivo and more.
Safe hand cleaning plus a gentle tone option.
JBL, Bose, Sony and other portable speakers.