Some iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max units are producing an unexplained crackling or popping sound from the earpiece speaker.
The noise ranges from a faint tick to intermittent clicking or crackling and can occur even when no audio is playing.
It can appear while scrolling a webpage, receiving a notification, opening the keyboard, or making a cellular call.
Airplane Mode can also trigger it when switched on or off, while rapidly changing the display brightness has produced the same behavior on affected devices.
iOS 27.0.1 doesn’t fix it
Apple released iOS 27.0.1 on September 28 with several fixes for the iPhone 18 Pro, including a Face ID problem that could cause the phone to restart after authentication failed.
The earpiece crackling remains after installing the update. The cause isn’t clear. The fact that actions such as toggling Airplane Mode or changing screen brightness can trigger a sound from the earpiece makes the behavior unusual, particularly when no audio is supposed to be playing.
Replacing the phone hasn’t necessarily solved it either. The same crackling has appeared on some replacement iPhone 18 Pro units, suggesting the problem isn’t limited to an individual defective phone.
That still doesn’t establish whether the underlying problem is hardware, firmware or software.
The problem doesn’t affect every iPhone 18 Pro
The crackling isn’t present on every iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max, and there’s currently no indication of how many devices are affected.
Apple hasn’t publicly acknowledged the problem or provided a workaround.
If you’re hearing the noise, there’s also no confirmed setting you can change to eliminate it. iOS 27.0.1 doesn’t appear to resolve the problem, and replacing the device isn’t a guaranteed fix.
For now, the cause of the earpiece crackling remains unknown.
