A steady low tone — 165 Hz is the value most water-eject tools use — played at maximum volume with the opening pointed at the floor, for fifteen to thirty seconds. Low frequencies move the diaphragm furthest, and that travel breaks the surface tension holding the droplet. Any clean continuous tone in that range does the same job.
Technically, 'the sound' is one continuous sine tone in the low hundreds of hertz. Android Authority describes the iPhone shortcut that made the trick famous as 'a simple Shortcut that plays a very low-frequency tone of 165Hz for about 12 seconds', and is clear that nothing about it is proprietary: 'all Water Eject does is play a 165Hz sound. You can do this with any device, including Android phones.'
Why low rather than high. At low frequencies the diaphragm makes large, slow excursions, and that displacement pumps air through the grille opening hard enough to move a droplet mechanically. Higher frequencies move the membrane a much shorter distance, so they push far less. Lower is not automatically better either — a phone speaker is physically small, and below roughly a hundred hertz it produces very little usable output no matter what you feed it. That is why the practical window sits in the low hundreds rather than down in the sub-bass.
The same idea already exists in hardware. How-To Geek describes the smartwatch version like this: 'Water lock works using sound waves which vibrate at the right frequency to propel liquid out of the speaker hole on the left side of your Apple Watch.' The phone version is that same mechanism done in software, using the speaker you already have.
Set expectations from a real test rather than a demo video. Android Authority tried tone videos on an iPhone 13, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 3 and Nokia 7.1 and found the 'speakers were powerful enough to push out some water through the speaker grille' — but also that the effect 'didn't last longer than a short burst', and that it 'wasn't able to solve problems from other entry points like the USB port or the SIM card slot'. The tone clears the opening. It does not dry a phone.
Three ways that need nothing installed, in order of how reliable they are. First, an online tone generator page: pick a sine wave, set it near 165 Hz, press play, and you get a continuous tone that starts instantly. Second, if the wet device is a smartwatch, use its own water lock — the hardware feature does exactly this. Third, ask a voice assistant to play a 165 Hz sound, which normally pulls up a tone video. The video route comes last because clips often open with silence, speech or an interruption, and those seconds are wasted.
Take the case off. Raise media volume — not ring volume — all the way. Switch Bluetooth off and unplug earphones, or the tone leaves through the wrong output entirely while the wet speaker sits silent. Silent mode and Do Not Disturb do not mute media, but a safe-volume cap or a volume limiter in settings does, so check for one. This is the step people skip, and it is the step that decides whether anything happens at all.
Hold the speaker grille facing straight at the floor — never flat on a table, because the water needs somewhere to fall. Play the tone continuously for fifteen to thirty seconds. Expect it to sound rough, buzzy or crackly at first: that is the membrane working against the water, and you can often hear it clean up part-way through, which is the most useful feedback you will get.
Maximum volume at arm's length is genuinely loud, and a droning low tone is unpleasant for animals in the room. Put the phone down on a folded towel with the speaker edge hanging just over the side, start the tone, and step back. Do not hold the speaker to your ear to check progress while it is playing — judge between passes, with the tone stopped.
Between passes, tap the back of the phone against the heel of your palm five or six times with the opening still pointing down — that repositions whatever the tone loosened but did not eject. Then judge with the same reference every time, and make it a spoken-word recording rather than music, because speech exposes dullness much more clearly. Two or three passes. If two in a row sound identical, more volume and more time will not change that.
The tone only ever clears the opening; the rest of the moisture leaves by evaporation. Stand the phone on edge with the speaker facing down in moving air — in front of a fan is ideal — for several hours before plugging in a charger, and longer if it was properly soaked. No hair dryer: heat pushes moisture deeper and stresses adhesive and battery. No rice: it does nothing to water already inside, and its dust finds its way into the grille and the port.
This page was written by DKsequence. We also make the Android app recommended below — the steps above work whether or not you install it.
Somewhere in the low hundreds of hertz. 165 Hz is the value the common water-eject tools settled on, and anything roughly between 150 and 200 Hz behaves much the same. There is no published comparison showing 165 Hz beats its neighbours — it is the value that spread, not a measured optimum. Going much lower is counterproductive, because a small speaker cannot reproduce it loudly enough to move anything.
Fifteen to thirty seconds per pass, two or three passes, tapping the phone against your palm between them. The iPhone shortcut version runs about twelve seconds. One long play is not better than several short ones, because the useful work happens early in each pass and gravity has to reposition the rest before the next one.
The physics is the same for any driver, but the wet device has to be the one playing the tone. Pair with the wet Bluetooth speaker and play the tone through it — that works. Playing the tone on your phone while it sits next to the wet speaker does not, because the water is pushed by that driver's own movement, not by sound arriving through the air.
Short passes at high volume are what hardware water-eject features do by design, so a few twenty-second runs are within normal use. What is worth avoiding is minutes of continuous maximum output. Stop as soon as two passes in a row stop making a difference — past that point it is heat with no benefit.
Stop playing tones. Stand the phone on edge with the opening facing down in moving air for a full day, then re-test with the same clip. If it is still dull, the cause is not a droplet in the grille — it is residue, lint packed into the mesh, or the driver itself, and none of those respond to a low tone.