No sound from iOS games without headphones connected

Josh Sherman
1 min read
Personal Apple

While I’ve had iPhones and iPads in the past, and have been back on iOS from Android for the last year, there are still some things that I’m ignorant to.

One of those things, is why most of the games I played on my iPhone only played sounds when I had headphones connected, and never through the phone itself.

Other things worked just fine, like watching videos, either on the web or via an app. A lot of games also worked just fine, which ultimately got me thinking that it was some extremely weird issue with the Apple Arcade, as I noticed the bulk of the issues with Apple Arcade titles.

Well turned out I’m just an idiot, and I never quite understood what the little switch on the side of my iPhone was actually doing.

I always thought that it was throwing my phone into a “do not disturb” mode that would keep the ringer at bay.

While technically correct, as it’s a toggle between “ring” and “silent” mode, it actually does more than that. It also disables the sound in many of the games I play.

Talk about feeling like an idiot the moment I flipped the switch and my game started to bleep and bloop without having headphones connected.

The more you know :)

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About Josh

Husband. Father. Pug dad. Musician. Founder of Holiday API, Head of Engineering and Emoji Specialist at Mailshake, and author of the best damn Lorem Ipsum Library for PHP.

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