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 the following sequence:
- 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. The tip comes to us from iDownloadBlog, who reports that the procedure 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.
