From time to time, the iPhone Home button can become less responsive to clicks, and pressing the button will either result in a delay, lag, or sometimes complete unresponsiveness requiring multiple clicks. While this could be symptomatic of a hardware issue caused by moisture damage or dropping the phone, sometimes you can fix the response problem with a simple software tweak.





Perform the following sequence on the iPhone with an unresponsive Home button:

Open a default iOS application, such as Stocks, Calculator, or Weather

Press and hold down the Power button until the “Slide to Power Off” dialog appears, then release

Now press and hold the Home button until the “Slide to Power Off” screen disappears, force quitting the application

Why this works to fix the buttons responsiveness isn’t entirely clear, because the procedure actually just force quits the application you launched in the first step. This procedure supposedly recalibrates the Home button. Whatever is going on behind the scenes, it does seem to work and definitely has made mine seem to respond quicker.

This should also help the iPad and iPod touch home buttons as well. If you try this and still have problems with the home button being unresponsive, you may just need to get it repaired.

If this didn’t help another workaround for a broken home button is with Assistive Touch, which enables an onscreen tappable virtual home button instead. If all else fails that may be the best bet without having to go in for repair.

Keep in mind that if an iPhone is still in warranty and the buttons stop working, you can often get them repaired for free by Apple. That won’t be the case with damaged models, but if it just mysteriously broke they will almost always fix it for you.