Guide: iPhone Home Button Not Working – How to Fix It

We’ve seen some reports from iPhone or iPad users that cannot make their home button work. So, we went to work and made some research to help you fix your problem.

While there are no longer a ton of buttons on our phones, since the touchscreen smartphones were introduced, it appears that a single button can also make our lives difficult when we need it to operate our phones.

Fortunately, there are more fixes to the iPhone home button.

Use a Native iOS App

1. Open a preinstalled App on your iPhone – the Calendar, for example.
2. Press on the power button and hold it until you get the message: “Slide to Power Off”.
3. Release the power button and don’t power off your phone.
4. Press and hold the home button for about 5-10 seconds, until it will take you to home screen.

Now check and see if this fixed the issue. If not, try this next method.

Rotate the Screen

1. Hold your iPhone in portrait mode and press and keep holding the home button.
2. While holding the home button, rotate the iPhone/ iPad in landscape mode.
3. Turn the device back in portrait mode and release the home button.

Check if this method solved your issue, and if it didn’t, try the next one.

Clean the Home Button

Maybe your home button has some debris that prevents it from properly working.

1. Look for a soft, lint free cloth and clean with care the iPhone’s / iPad’s home button.
2. Use a compressed air can and blow air into the charging port to remove any particles that are inside.

You can also try this method, if the home button is still non-responsive.

Push the Lightning Connector into the Charging Port

Maybe the home button has an issue because there is something wrong inside the charging port. You can fix it following the next three steps:

1. Plug in the lightning charging cable into the phone’s port.
2. Push down the lightning connector, gently and lift it up towards the screen. This way, it should put a little pressure on what’s behind the home button.
3. While doing the previous step, press on the home button and see if it is now functional.

If none of these fixing methods worked, then your home button may be physically damaged. Don’t despair as there is also a fix for that, creating a virtual home button to replace the physical one.

Enable a Virtual Home Button on Your iPhone

For this fix, you don’t need to install a third-party app on your iDevice, because iOS has a native app that will create a virtual home button for you. To enable this virtual home button, follow the next steps:

1. Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘General’ -> ‘Accessibility’
2. Search for a section called ‘Assistive Touch’, and open it.
3. Enable the ticker that is next to ‘Assistive Touch’ and you will see on your screen a gray rectangle and a white circle in its middle.
4. By tapping on that circle, you will get to a menu in which you will find the virtual home button that can easily replace your physical home button.
5. You can customize the virtual home button in the Assistive Touch menu and add or remove some functionalities.

We hope that one of these methods have solved your problems. If you hate the idea of a home button, you could always go for the iPhone X, so you won’t ever have a problem with a home button, as it won’t even exist on the iPhone X. But consider that this option is a lot more expensive than our solution.