Unidentifiable iPhone beep

January 12, 2019 9:21 AM

My iPhone X has recently begun giving me a random, almost mechanical-sounding, beep and I can't identify why.

I have an iPhone X running the most recent iOS update that I've had for about a year. In the past week or two I have noticed an almost mechanical sounding beep happening at irregular intervals. By mechanical I mean that it sounds almost like the low-battery note from your fire alarm except a little softer, meaning it doesn't sound like a normal notification tone--almost sounds like it's coming from inside the phone instead of from the speaker if that makes sense. It isn't associated with any notification popping up on screen and my phone is otherwise running completely normally. I've heard it probably 5 or 6 times in the last week or so, 2 of which have already been this morning.

Can anyone help me figure out what this is and how to fix it? Appreciate it!

posted by greta simone to Technology (7 answers total)

Some people recommended clearing Safari's cache, as it may be a holdover from an ad trying to play through your music player (which sounds crazy).

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphonehelp/comments/5pldeg/my_iphone_started_beeping_like_a_smoke_detector/
posted by katecholamine at 10:16 AM on January 12, 2019

Response by poster: It didn't beep like a loud screaming alarm, just like that small beep when the battery is dying. And I cleared safari's cache already after doing some reading on the subject earlier, but the beep is still happening.
posted by greta simone at 11:15 AM on January 12, 2019

One suggestion is to go through the apps listed in Settings > Notifications, and watch out for any apps that have sounds turned on, but with alerts and badges turned off.
posted by applesurf at 8:24 PM on January 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Adding to what applesurf says, you could also make an inventory of those apps that do have sounds on, turn half off, wait whatever time you think is adequate for the beep to sound off, then, if the beep sounds, renable sounds on then first half and disable the second half. If the sound does not show up when you disable whichever half, then enable half of that disabled half. You’ll slowly whittle down the options and find the culprit. This may take some time if the sound is infrequent or occasional or intermittent but it will work.
posted by tcv at 3:30 AM on January 13, 2019

Just piling on, I would turn them all off as a first step, so you know for sure that one of them is the source.
posted by defcom1 at 4:02 AM on January 13, 2019

Response by poster: So first of all, I want to reiterate that this is not a notification sound. I know that because any notifications I have show previews, and also that this beep does not exist in the list of available notification sound options. But just to be sure, I turned off all notifications on all apps and I am still getting this sound. So I think it's safe to say that it isn't notification related.
posted by greta simone at 7:03 AM on January 13, 2019

I've had this happen when the Lightning port on the bottom of the phone has something in it, or when the port is failing.

Take a cocktail stick or something non-metallic and have a dig in the charging port to see if you have anything that might be causing a short. Then I'd probably take it to the Apple Store for a diagnostic.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:48 PM on January 13, 2019