Apple’s iPhone is the most popular smartphone in the US — and it’s no wonder why, with its sleek design and Apple’s great marketing. But even the best technology comes with a few bugs. Some iPhone users have reported that their iPhones seem to vibrate randomly, with no clear reason why.
Your iPhone might be vibrating with no clear reason due to an an app sending notifications that disappear immediately. There’s a lower chance it’s from water damage, a faulty charger, or software glitches. Some fixes include restarting your phone, checking for updates, and disabling vibration.
Let’s take a closer look at why the iPhone might vibrate for no apparent reason, as well as what you can do if this happens.
Why Does Your iPhone Keep Vibrating for No Apparent Reason?
Many users may notice their iPhone vibrating for seemingly no reason every now and again, and it’s usually due to a notification that has disappeared very quickly.
However, if you notice this happening often, there might be something else going on. Here are some of the possible culprits:
App Notifications
Even if you notice it happening a lot, app notifications are usually the most common cause of a ghost vibration. Some notifications will disappear right away, or there may be a setting turned on where the iPhone is vibrating but no actual banner notification is showing up.
Software Glitch
It can happen that there’s a software glitch somewhere in the iPhone that’s causing the vibrating, and the notification isn’t actually coming from an app.
Hardware Damage
It’s also possible that the hardware has been damaged, causing random vibrations to occur. This can happen for any number of reasons, such as if you dropped the phone or got water on it. If you’ve recently damaged your phone and then it started vibrating without a clear cause, you might have found the issue.
Faulty Charger
If your iPhone only vibrates randomly when it’s plugged in, you may have a faulty charger. A faulty charger is prone to disconnect and reconnect over and over, causing your iPhone to vibrate every time it does.
How Do You Stop Your iPhone from Vibrating Randomly?
Now that you know the possible causes of your iPhone randomly vibrating, you need to know how to stop it. Here are some possible solutions:
Check Your Notifications
When you’re getting these vibrations, the first thing you should do is check if it’s actually a random glitch or there’s a clear reason for it.
When the phone vibrates and you don’t see anything on your home screen, unlock the phone and pull down the notifications menu by swiping down. Here, you should see all of your recent notifications that you haven’t yet accessed.
You can scroll through them and see which ones you recognize. This can be quite helpful to do if you know approximately what time you felt a vibration (say, a moment ago) because you can see if there’s a notification there and track it back to an app.
If you do track it back to an app, you can either delete the app, ignore the vibration now that you know what it was for, or turn off the notifications for that app (Settings > General > Notifications).
Restart Your Phone
One of the first things you should do with any iPhone glitch is to restart the phone and see if this stops the problem. You can do this by holding down the power and volume up button on the phone and then swiping right to turn the phone off. Leave it for a couple of minutes and then switch it back on to see if the random vibrating has stopped.
Make Sure Your Phone Is Updated
You should also make sure that your phone’s software is up to date. This is important because Apple often puts out software updates to fix bugs on the phone, and older software left on the device can become outdated pretty quickly.
To check if you have the latest software on your phone, navigate toward Settings > General > Software Update.
Here, you’ll be able to see if any new software is available. It’s easy to forget about updates, but if you ever turned off automatic updates, checking in on this now and again can save you from a lot of glitches. Consider setting updates to happen between 2-4 am, when you’re asleep and they won’t impact your day.
Update Your Apps
As well as making sure the phone software is updated, it’s also important to make sure that the apps are too. This is because each app has its own individual programming, and it could be sending through vibrating because there’s a bug with the app itself rather than the overall iOS software.
You can do this by heading into the App Store and then tapping ‘Updates‘ on the bottom right-hand side of the menu. Here, you should see a display of all of the apps that have available updates. You can choose to update one at a time or update them all at once and they’ll be placed into a queue.
It’s a good idea to do this when connected to WiFi, as it can eat up quite a bit of data to download those updates.
Close All Apps
If you notice that the vibration is happening when you have a lot of apps open, then close them properly and see if the problem stops. You can do this by swiping up from the bottom of your screen and then swiping the apps off that you want to close.
If you’re willing to take some time, you can troubleshoot them by closing a couple at a time and seeing if the vibrating stops. When it does stop, you can figure out which specific app was causing the issue (if it’s due to an app at all).
Turn Vibrate Settings Off
If you can’t figure out the source of the issue or you’ve figured it out but still want to avoid further vibrations, then you can always turn the vibrate feature off. To do so, navigate to Settings > General > Accessibility.
Here, you can turn all vibrations off, which should include the glitchy vibration coming through. It just means your phone won’t vibrate for messages and alerts while it’s on silent.
Check Your Charger
If the iPhone is only randomly vibrating when you’re charging it, then it’s safe to assume the issue has to do with the charger or the charging port. Firstly, watch the iPhone while it’s on charge to confirm that charging is the issue. When it vibrates, does it seem to disconnect from the charger and then reconnect, indicated by the battery symbol at the top right?
If it does, try connecting another charger to your iPhone. If that works, then the issue is with your charging setup. You probably need to purchase a new cable (on Amazon).
If the issue is still happening with another cable, then it may be an issue with the port on your phone, and professional repair may be needed.
You can also gently swab the port with a dry Q-tip to make sure it’s clean and nothing is getting in the way of the charger. However, never dig in deep and don’t actually insert anything in the port — especially not liquid.
Restore the Phone
If all else has failed and you can’t work out where the vibration is coming from, then you can try to restore the phone to a previous backup — or, if you don’t have one, reset it to factory settings. Just make sure you back up any content you want to keep through iCloud or iTunes.
To restore the phone, you can connect it to your computer and open up iTunes. Find your device and click ‘Restore‘ to go through the motions of bringing it back to a previous date — preferably, one that was before the random vibrations began.
If you don’t have a backup or just want to reset the phone completely, you can go to: Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings.
By doing this, you should restore the software to being as good as new and, if there was a glitch, it should be gone.
If you’re running into other errors, like problems with the TrueDepth camera feature or storage filling up unexpectedly, doing a full Restore of the phone is a pretty good way to try and clear any of those. It’s a great general-purpose (but sledgehammer-scale) troubleshooting step.
Take Your Phone for Repair
Sometimes the random vibration is unfortunately due to hardware damage within the phone, which means DIY fixes probably won’t work. Before you decide to take the phone for repair, make sure you’ve covered all of the other steps to avoid paying for something you don’t need to.
If you’ve followed the other steps (or are sure it was due to hardware damage, like dropping the phone or accidentally submerging it in water), then you should contact Apple. You can do this via their website or by calling them, and you’ll be able to drop the phone off with a licensed technician or send it away in the mail.
It’s impossible to say exactly how much the repair will cost, since it’ll depend on the root issue of the problem. However, Apple should be able to give you a quote before they proceed.
You can also use an unlicensed repair shop, though you should be warned that this may void any warranty or insurance you have on your phone. It’s usually best to go through Apple themselves.
With most cases of an iPhone randomly vibrating, however, at-home fixes should be enough to solve the issue. Oftentimes, the vibrating isn’t as random as the user might think.