Clean your phone speakers with sound waves

Play a low-frequency tone through the speaker at full volume with the phone held speaker-side down, so the vibrating membrane pushes the water out and gravity takes it away. That is the whole mechanism, and it is what CleanWave automates: it opens on 180 Hz, the band that moves the most air in a phone speaker, runs a cleaning cycle of sound and vibration together, and tells you to turn the volume up because the amplitude is what does the work. Most trapped water is gone within one or two cycles.

For water sitting in the speaker cavity and the grille, yes, and the reason is not mysterious: a speaker is a membrane that moves air, a low tone at high volume moves it a long way, and water in front of it gets pushed. It is the same principle as the water-eject feature Apple Watch has shipped for years. What it cannot do is dry the inside of a phone that took water past its seals, un-corrode a contact, or repair a speaker that is physically damaged. It clears the passage; it is not a repair.

Low. Somewhere between roughly 100 and 200 Hz is where a phone speaker’s membrane travels furthest, which is why CleanWave starts at 180 Hz and why the well-known water-eject tones sit around 165 Hz. Higher tones move the air faster but far less, which is better for shaking fine dust loose than for shifting a droplet. The app gives you the whole range from 50 Hz to 2000 Hz so you can work down for water and up for dust, but if you only ever touch one setting, leave it low.

Yes. The tones are ordinary audio at ordinary volume — nothing your phone would not produce playing music loudly, and the speaker is built to do exactly this. The two real cautions are about your ears and the people near you, not the hardware: hold the phone away from your head while a cycle runs, and take earbuds out first. If the sound is distorting badly at full volume that is worth noticing, but it is a sign the speaker already has a problem, not one the tone is creating.

Usually because it is blocked rather than wet. Pocket lint, dust and skin oil pack into the grille mesh over months and physically reduce how much air gets through, and the effect is gradual enough that most people never notice it happening — they just conclude the phone got quieter with age. A case with a slightly misaligned speaker cutout does the same thing instantly. Vibration cycles shake loose material out of the mesh; anything genuinely caked in needs a soft dry brush as well.

Yes, cleaning is free and there is no advertising anywhere in the app. CleanWave Max is an optional subscription that unlocks unlimited sessions, every frequency and cleaning style, the full top-and-bottom speaker test, custom reminders and every future cleaning mode. Free on iOS and Android.

Yes, entirely. The tones are generated on your device, so there is nothing to download and nothing to send anywhere — which matters, because the moment you most need this is usually the moment you have just got out of the water and have no signal. The app does not need an account and does not ask for your microphone in order to clean.

Once a month is plenty for ordinary use, and thirty seconds is enough for a routine pass. Clean immediately after any water — rain, a pool, a spill, a shower shelf — and after anything dusty or sandy, because the material is loosest right after it arrives. If you use the phone at the gym, weekly is worth it; sweat is salty and it dries hard. CleanWave will remind you on whatever schedule you set so it stops being something you remember only when the sound is already bad.

Not if the speaker itself has failed, and it will not pretend otherwise. The way to tell them apart takes a minute: run the speaker test and play through the top and bottom speakers separately. If one is silent and the other is fine, or the sound is present but crackling and distorted at any volume, that is hardware or corrosion and it needs a repair. If both are quiet, dull, or thin but still working, that is a blockage and it is exactly what this app is for.

Yes, on both, and the method is the same because the physics is. The one practical difference is placement: most iPhones and most Android phones put the main speaker on the bottom edge beside the charging port and the second one in the earpiece slot at the top, so both need cleaning and the speaker test is what tells you which one is blocked. Free on iOS and Android, in 24 languages.

Only indirectly, and it is worth being precise about why. The tones play through the speaker they are routed to, so sending them to a Bluetooth speaker does clean that speaker. AirPods and in-ear buds are a different problem: what blocks them is earwax packed into the mesh, which is a solid, and no amount of vibration moves it. Those need the mesh cleaning by hand with a dry soft brush. Use CleanWave for the phone; use a brush for the buds.

They will not at arm’s length, and they could at your ear, which is the only reason this warning exists. A cleaning cycle runs at full volume by design because amplitude is what shifts the water, and a phone at full volume held against your head is loud enough to be worth avoiding. Put the phone down on a surface, or hold it away from you, and take earbuds out first. CleanWave also has a decibel meter if you want to see what the room you are in is actually doing.