How to Turn on Water Eject on iPhone
If you’re an iPhone owner, you might be familiar with how water can sometimes get trapped in crevices of the speaker grill and wreak havoc on your audio.
That’s why Apple created a Siri shortcut called “Water Eject” that can help you clear away the mess in no time at all. You can activate it with a simple tap or by saying “Hey Siri, water eject.”
Turning it on
If you’re using an iPhone that’s water-resistant to some degree, it’s not uncommon for liquid to find its way into your device’s speaker grille. This can obstruct your ability to hear calls or notifications, and can potentially damage your speaker.
The good news is that you can easily eject any water from your iPhone speakers by using a free shortcut. This Shortcut plays a low-frequency tone of 165Hz, which is widely known to get your speakers to shake and expel water.
This is the same mechanism used in Apple’s Water Lock feature on its iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. It’s an easy and safe way to protect your device against any accidental contact with water, and is available for all devices running iOS 12.
You can activate this shortcut by launching Shortcuts on your iPhone and tapping the “Get Shortcut” button. The shortcut will then appear in your My Shortcuts section, as well as on the home screen.
Activating the shortcut manually is easy: just tap Begin, and it will play a tone for about 15 seconds. After it’s done, you’ll receive a notification.
While this shortcut isn’t perfect, it should be enough to eject any water that’s trapped in your speaker grille. However, it’s also not the best way to do so; the low-frequency tone may harm your speakers, so you should avoid playing it for too long.
To use the shortcut, all you need is the iPhone’s Shortcuts app, which comes preinstalled on most iOS devices. If you don’t have it, you can download it from the App Store and add it to your iPhone’s home screen.
The shortcut should be available to all users, but you can also download it from the Shortcuts Gallery website if you have an older iPhone that doesn’t support the shortcut. You can then activate it in one of three ways: Start a new session, touch the shortcut or say “Hey Siri.” Follow Tom’s Guide on TikTok for more tips, hacks and hidden features!
Turning it off
Despite their IP68 water-resistance, iPhones still can get a little damp after being submerged in liquid, and that can make it hard for them to work properly again. That’s because water can get into the microphone, speaker and charging port.
That can be really frustrating, especially if you’re trying to listen to music or check your notifications on the go, and you don’t want to be unable to hear what’s going on. Luckily, you can use the free Water Eject shortcut to blast out all that extra moisture and let your speakers and microphone do their jobs again!
This Siri shortcut is available in the Shortcuts app, and you can activate it by adding it to your shortcut library. It then plays a low-frequency tone that ejects water out of your iPhone’s speaker grilles to make them work correctly again.
Once you’ve added it, you can then run the shortcut whenever your phone seeps into liquid, and it should eject most of it out before your iPhone gets too wet to use. The only downside is that it might take a while to get all the water out, so you may need to repeat it in some cases.
You can also add the shortcut to your home screen, so it’s easy to find when you drop your iPhone in liquid. It’s a great feature for those who are prone to dropping their phones in water a lot, and can be especially useful if you’re always at the beach or pool.
Activating it with Siri
When you drop your iPhone into water, it’s important to make sure that you get it dry quickly. Modern iPhones are water resistant, but they can still get damaged when exposed to water for a prolonged period of time.
The best way to avoid this situation is by ensuring that you store your device in a dry place when you’re not using it. However, it’s often hard to keep track of your phone when you’re out and about.
Thankfully, Apple has a way to prevent water from entering your speaker grille and other areas of your iPhone. It’s called Water Eject, and it works on all iPhone models that support Siri shortcuts.
This feature works by playing a low-frequency sound that makes your speakers vibrate and pushes the water out of the speaker grille. Depending on how much water has got into your iPhone, you can choose the intensity of the sound.
To activate the shortcut, simply launch the Shortcuts app on your iOS device. Once there, navigate to the My Shortcuts page and tap on Water Eject to run it.
Once the shortcut has been run, you’ll hear a tone that will play for roughly 15 seconds. After that, a notification will appear on your screen letting you know that the water has been ejected from your iPhone.
You can also activate the shortcut by using a voice command. Just say “Hey Siri, water eject.”
Activating it manually
If you’ve ever accidentally dropped your iPhone in the toilet, or if you’ve been caught by surprise in an emergency situation where you need to get your phone dry, it’s a good idea to know how to turn on water eject. The iPhone is waterproof (IP68), so it can resist getting submerged in up to two meters of water for 30 minutes.
But it doesn’t always work, especially if the water is particularly heavy or your phone’s batteries haven’t been recharged in some time. For these instances, Apple has come up with a solution that allows you to blast out water from the speaker grills of your iPhone using a low-frequency sound similar to what the Apple Watch does.
All you have to do is add a shortcut for it to your shortcut library on your device, which will let you use it whenever the water seeps into your iPhone’s speaker cavity. To do that, open the Shortcuts app on your device (if it’s not already installed) and go to the My Shortcuts tab. Tap the “Water Eject” card, which will prompt you to add the shortcut to your library.
