Jaw Clicking: When It's Nothing and When It's TMJ
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Abinaash Kaur, DDS, RCDSO, on 2026-09-04. Dr. Kaur is a general dentist in Toronto (Bloor West Village) registered with the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario.
A jaw that clicks and doesn't hurt usually needs no treatment at all. The click that earns an appointment is the one arriving with pain, catching, or a jaw that won't open as wide as it used to.
Most people hear the noise and picture a joint wearing out. For the majority, pretty much the opposite is true.
I've practised in Bloor West Village for about 25 years, and this comes up more often as an aside than as a complaint. Someone points at the side of their face while I'm checking a filling and asks whether it's serious.
Our post on stopping nighttime grinding covers clenching, and our night guard guide covers protecting teeth from it. This one is about the joint itself, and the noise it makes.
What's making the noise?
The click has a name. Dentists call it disc displacement with reduction, and it's the most common thing happening inside a jaw joint that clicks (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Here's the mechanism, stripped down. A small cushion of cartilage called the disc sits between your jawbone and your skull. In a clicking joint, that disc rests slightly forward while your mouth is closed. It slides back into position as you open, and the noise is the moment it lands (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
A second click on the way closed is the same cushion slipping forward again.
Here's the part that surprises people. Once your mouth is fully open, the bone and the disc sit almost exactly where they would in a joint that makes no sound at all (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed). The joint isn't stuck in a wrong position. It passes through one on the way.
Is a clicking jaw common?
More common than almost anyone guesses. A 2025 systematic review pooling 27 studies and 20,971 people estimated that nearly a third of people worldwide, 29.5%, have some form of jaw joint or jaw muscle disorder (Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache via PubMed). North America came out lowest of the continents studied, at 19.4% (Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache via PubMed).
Within that pooled data, clicking or joint sounds showed up at 29.8%, while limited opening or locking was the least common sign of the group at 8.1% (Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache via PubMed).
The noisy version is far more common than the stuck version.
Most people think a clicking joint is a joint on its way out. What gives. A displaced disc that still slides back into place turns up in 33% of people with no symptoms whatsoever (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Clicking also comes and goes, especially in younger people. A Japanese study followed 62 children and teenagers through an investigation running from 1987 to 1992, and found clicking in 30 of them at some point, 48%. In 26 of those, 42%, the noise was temporary, and only 3 children, 5%, still clicked at the end (Head & Face Medicine via PubMed). The author reported no jaw dysfunction requiring treatment anywhere in the group (Head & Face Medicine via PubMed).
Does a click turn into a locked jaw?
Usually not, and the long follow-ups are the reassuring part.
The review that gathers them puts it plainly. A clicking joint of this kind "is usually asymptomatic and requires no treatment, since the TMJ structures adapt very well and painlessly to different disc positions" (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Look at what happens when nobody intervenes. In one longitudinal study, 155 joints diagnosed as normal or as clicking got no treatment at all, and 137 of them, 88.4%, had the same diagnosis 7.9 years later on average (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
An earlier group followed 70 untreated patients who clicked on both opening and closing for three years. The clicking stayed unchanged in 50 of them and disappeared in 20. Of those 20, 14 went on to open normally and 6 developed locking (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Did you know about this? A click that goes away isn't automatically good news, which is why that study split the 20 who lost the noise into 14 who opened normally and 6 who locked.
A third group followed 24 untreated patients for around 26 months and found the range of jaw movement unchanged, with the clicking not progressing to locking in most of them (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
So when does a click earn a visit?
When something joins it.
Researchers followed 61 patients who had already come in about a clicking joint. Over six months, 12 of them, 20%, progressed to a locked jaw. The ones who progressed had more joint pain while chewing, more disturbed jaw function, and more frequent temporary locking at that first visit (Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology via PubMed).
Read that 20% carefully. Those were people with enough trouble to seek care, not people walking around with a quiet click, so the number doesn't transfer to a joint that only makes noise.
A two-year study of 55 people found the same signal from the other direction. Among those with intermittent locking, the moment of the click shifted later into the opening, and the authors concluded that intermittent locking "may be indicative of the development of a disc displacement without reduction" (Journal of Orofacial Pain via PubMed). Even then, they wrote, that change "is only rarely accompanied by symptoms of permanent locking" (Journal of Orofacial Pain via PubMed).
The tell isn't the click. It's the company the click keeps.
Mention it at your next visit if you notice any of these:
- pain in the joint, or in the muscles at your temple and cheek
- the jaw catching or sticking, even for a second
- not being able to open as wide as you used to
- a bite that suddenly feels different to you
- a jaw that locks open after a yawn
What helps if the click bothers you?
Start with the cheapest, most reversible things, because those carry the evidence.
An umbrella review published in 2026 gathered 11 systematic reviews covering 49 primary studies. Six reported favourable results for self-management, five found the evidence insufficient either way, and the authors concluded that "existing evidence generally suggests beneficial effects from self-management strategies such as patient education, behavioural therapy and jaw exercises" (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed).
The Canadian Dental Association says the same thing about the whole condition: "Most patients with TMDs get better by themselves without any treatment" (Canadian Dental Association).
Their self-care list is short and free. Warm or cold compress on the jaw, gentle massage of the jaw muscles, soft food cut into small pieces, skipping hard and chewy and sticky foods, and not opening too wide even when you yawn (Canadian Dental Association).
Try this: a few times a day, notice where your teeth are. At rest, "your teeth should be slightly apart and your tongue should rest on the floor of your mouth" (Canadian Dental Association). Plenty of people find their back teeth touching all day and don't know it.
Is a night guard the same as a splint for the joint?
Often the same appliance, aimed at a different problem. The Canadian Dental Association describes a night guard as "also called an occlusal splint", a clear plastic appliance fitting over the biting surfaces of one jaw so you bite against it instead of your teeth (Canadian Dental Association).
The evidence for it is more modest than its popularity suggests. An overview of 21 systematic reviews, published in 2026 by the same group behind the self-management review, found methodological quality ranging from critically low in five reviews to high in four (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed).
Twelve of the reviews compared splints with other conservative treatments, and of those, four reported effective pain reduction while three did not. Another five concluded there was insufficient evidence either for or against splint therapy over other active treatments (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed). The single review comparing a splint against no treatment supported no difference in pain reduction in the jaw joint area (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed). Their overall verdict was "small beneficial or neutral effects" (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed).
Put the two reviews side by side and the ranking is worth knowing. Education and jaw exercises, which cost nothing, came out favourable. The appliance came out small or neutral.
That doesn't make guards pointless. If you're grinding, a guard protects teeth from wear and the sensitivity that follows it, which is a job the evidence above wasn't testing. We go through that job in our night guard guide, and our post on sudden tooth sensitivity covers what worn enamel feels like. Botox for clenching gets its own section, with the trial evidence, in our post on nighttime grinding.
What shouldn't be done for a click?
Anything permanent, at least not for a noise on its own.
Reshaping teeth to balance the bite is the classic offer, and a review in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinics of North America weighed the literature behind it and concluded the approach "is not recommended for routine use" (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Clinics of North America via PubMed).
Operating is rarer still. "Surgery is rarely used to treat TMDs", the Canadian Dental Association says, and reserves it for cases where other treatments haven't worked or "it is very hard to open your jaw" (Canadian Dental Association).
The researchers who reviewed clicking jaws were blunt about where the field stands: there is "no gold standard treatment for TMJ clicking", so conservative approaches come first when someone wants the noise addressed (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed). Their line about a quiet joint is shorter still. "In absence of complaints, no treatment is recommended" (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Two questions cover you if a permanent change gets suggested. What problem is this solving, and can it be undone? Our guide to reading a treatment plan has the rest of them.
Some days the schedule pushes me, and even then a clicking jaw is worth a few minutes of watching you open and close rather than a quick referral. Often the answer is that nothing needs doing, and hearing that from someone who checked is different from reading it here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is jaw clicking dangerous? On its own, no. A displaced disc that still slides back into place is "usually asymptomatic and requires no treatment", and turns up in 33% of people with no symptoms at all (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed). Pain, catching, or a drop in how wide you can open changes the picture and is worth reporting to your dentist.
Q: Will my clicking jaw lock up eventually? Most don't. Of 155 untreated joints diagnosed as normal or clicking, 137 (88.4%) had the same diagnosis about 7.9 years later (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed). Among 70 untreated patients followed three years, the click stayed unchanged in 50 and disappeared in 20, and of that 20, six developed locking (Journal of Applied Oral Science via PubMed).
Q: What's the difference between a clicking jaw and TMJ? TMJ is the joint. TMD, short for temporomandibular disorder, is the group of conditions affecting that joint, the chewing muscles, and the tissue around them (Canadian Dental Association). Clicking is one sign among several, and having it doesn't mean you have pain or restricted movement.
Q: Can jaw exercises stop the clicking? They're a reasonable first step. An umbrella review of 11 systematic reviews found "beneficial effects from self-management strategies such as patient education, behavioural therapy and jaw exercises" (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed). Ask your dentist which movements suit your joint rather than copying a video, since the right exercise depends on what's causing the noise.
Q: Does a night guard fix a clicking jaw? Not reliably. An overview of 21 systematic reviews reported "small beneficial or neutral effects" from splint therapy, with the one review comparing a splint against no treatment finding no difference in jaw joint pain (Journal of Oral Rehabilitation via PubMed). A guard has a clearer job protecting teeth from grinding wear.
Q: Should I stop chewing gum if my jaw clicks? It's a sensible thing to try. The Canadian Dental Association advises a soft diet, cutting food small, avoiding hard and chewy and sticky foods, and not opening too wide even when yawning (Canadian Dental Association). None of it costs anything, and you'll know within a couple of weeks whether it helps.
Q: My jaw locked open after a yawn. Is that an emergency? Get seen the same day. A jaw stuck open or one that suddenly won't open properly is different from a click, and it belongs in front of a dentist or a physician rather than in a waiting list. Bring anything you've noticed about how long it's been happening.
Reviewed by Dr. Abinaash Kaur, B.Sc., DDS (University of Toronto Faculty of Dentistry), who has practised general and family dentistry in Bloor West Village for about 25 years. This article is general oral health information, not a diagnosis or a substitute for an examination.
Hearing a click every time you open? Come in and we'll watch how the joint moves, measure how wide you open, and tell you honestly whether it needs anything at all. If it does, we'll point you to the right person for it. We're at 750 Annette Street in Bloor West Village, serving the Junction, High Park, and Baby Point. Book a visit with The Village Dentist and we'll take a look.
