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There are several ways to untangle headphones but what is the fastest way? Also how can you avoid it happening from the beginning (easiest way) ?

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Untangling

When it's tangled, be patient and push loose ends towards the knots instead of pulling on a knotted piece. Or if you have a pin, use that to loosen the knots

Prevention without extra stuff

Prevent it by cross-wrapping it when you store them.

See this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHNfcpqebW8

Prevention with stuff

Just wrap the cord around something, for example a piece of old creditcard with two notches across.

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  • The cross-wrapping method shown in the video means you have to put tight bends in the wires, which leads to more metal fatigue in the wire, eventually they'll break. Wrapping tightly around a sharp object like a credit card has the same effect.
    – Hobbes
    Commented Feb 4, 2016 at 13:42
  • All methods for storing wires in a close space will bend the wires. The best method not to bend them, but still be able to pack tightly, is to make a flat pack of big circles, but it will get tangled. It is a trade off.
    – Rob Audenaerde
    Commented Feb 4, 2016 at 15:43
  • For thin cables like most earbuds have, a circle with a diameter of 5 cm is generally wide enough not to wear out the cable in a few years. A knot tight enough to hold the cable together, on the other hand, will cause problems.
    – Hobbes
    Commented Feb 5, 2016 at 10:01
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In the 5th grade I had the same problem. So did half my class so our teacher showed us a way.
All you have to do is wrap the headphones around your hand then when you take them off tie some sturdy plastic or those twist ties you find at the grocerie store. This keeps them together and untangled.

When you need to use the headphones or earbuds just take off the twist tie and GENTLY pull the two loose ends of your headphones. This little hack has saved me many times in the world of headphones and might help you.

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Prevention

The over/under cable coiling method works reasonably well. But you can't prevent tangling completely without rolling the cable onto a drum.

Why

It's simple maths: there's only one untangled configuration for a cable, and even for short lengths, lots of ways to tangle it. That makes it very likely the cable will end up in a tangled configuration over time.

Untangling

  1. Grab the cable approximately in the middle. The place where the cable splits into two is a good place to start.
  2. Drop the ends.
  3. Gently untangle the remaining tangles, by feeding the loose end back through any loops it's in.
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  • To the downvoter: why the downvote? Have you found this method doesn't work?
    – Hobbes
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 17:15

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