Listen to Music While on Phone Calls to Get Through Boring Hold Times

Being put on hold is never fun, and for some particularly busy companies that hold time can easily end up being 30-45 minutes of waiting and twiddling your thumbs to talk to whatever representative awaits you on the other end. If you’re lucky, they’ll put on some lame hold music or have some repetitive “we’ll be right with you” line that comes up every few minutes (or unlucky, depending on the tunes) to sort of help pass the time.

A better way to pass the time of being put on hold awaits you on the iPhone, and to get through long waits or some incredibly boring phone conversation, you can play your own music or podcast instead, that way you’ll at least be listening to something you chose.

Playing music or any other audio while on a phone call is easy:

1. While on an active phone call, tap the Home button to get to the home screen
2. Open the Music app, find any song or podcast, and press play
3. Return to the phone call screen by tapping the green titlebar

Music (or any audio) plays immediately, but instead of outputting through the external speakers, it will be played through the ear speaker. This prevents the music from being piped through to the other end of the phone, and that means the other end will never know you’re jamming to Milli Vanilli to make it through their tortuously boring phone calls and wait times.

You can also play streaming music services like Pandora or Last.fm while on a call, but your iPhone will either need to be connected to a wi-fi network or with a service provider that allows simultaneous data and voice transmission, like AT&T.

If you want to try this out yourself, call a random 800 number that you’re all but guaranteed to never speak to a human for, like any standard overpriced US internet service provider with bad service. Have fun!

Thanks to Tremmel P. for dropping this nice little tip on our Facebook page, don’t forget to like us over there!