An issue causing a crackling sound from the earpiece speaker of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max has been reported by users. The glitch only concerns the top earpiece receiver. Users report a crackling sound during random day-to-day actions such as typing on the keyboard or scrolling through websites. Reports suggest that this crackling sound can also be manually triggered on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. This can be done by rapidly sliding the screen brightness bar or toggling Airplane Mode on and off.
What Is Causing the Speaker Crackling on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max?
While there has been no official statement regarding the root cause, tech experts point to a software bug rather than a hardware defect. Several customers who returned phones affected by the crackling sound received brand-new replacements. However, they found the replacement phones were was also making the same crackling sound.
The crackling sound may be caused by system-level triggers. Since the crackling usually coincides” with haptic feedback, UI animations and system adjustments, the cause may be a software communication error.
How Can Users Address the Crackling Sound?
Until Apple releases an iOS update specifically targeting this audio issue affecting the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, experts suggest some community-tested workarounds to eliminate the crackling sound.
Changing the microphone mode to disable the Voice Isolation option has successfully reduced the sound for many users. This is because iOS employs advanced digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms to isolate a user’s voice from background noise during app usage. With Voice Isolation active, the system will filter frequencies and cause internal audio chipsets to process data in real time.
Moreover, clearing temporary system data may also resolve the issue by physically cutting power to the memory logic chips. This reinitialises the iPhone’s hardware components from scratch in case any operational logs stored in the system cache are corrupted. Users are also advised to keep an eye out for new iOS updates.
