How to Turn Off iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad Devices
Written by Heather Leister
|
Screenshots
|
Yes, you read that title correctly! I am doing an entire how to on turning off your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Why? Two reasons. The first is that I was out to dinner with my girlfriends and one had her Facebook app freeze up on her. She deleted the app but then her iPhone promptly froze up. She asked me what to do about it and I gave her my fallback answer – turn your phone off and back on. Her next question surprised me a little bit – How do I turn it off? Fast forward to about a week later when my husband was going over some technical analytics mumbly jumbly stuff for this website. He told me that a large number of people reach this site through search results for the words “how to turn off iPhone” or something similar. What? I get a huge amount of traffic to my article about shutting down apps but shutting down the phone? I’d never thought about answering that question but apparently there’s a need for some simple instructions. Thinking back I’m not sure how long it took me to finally ask my husband how to turn my phone off in the beginning. I do know there was some pride swallowing involved before I asked. So here goes!
To turn off your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad the first thing you’ll want to do is find the rectangular button on the top of your device. This is called the Sleep/Wake button. Press down on the button and hold it for a few seconds. If you let it go the only thing you’ve done is made your screen go dark. This is fine if you’re in a movie theater or another place where you need to quickly darken your screen but you haven’t turned off your device. You need to hold down that button until you get a screen with a red arrow at the top and a bar that says “slide to power off”. At the bottom of the screen will be a cancel button. Place your finger on the red arrow and slide your finger to the right. This will shut down your iPhone. As it’s shutting down you’ll see a spinning circle in the middle of your screen. Simple as that!
Now that you’ve turned off your device how do you turn it back on? The answer is to do the exact same thing. Hold down the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears in the middle of your screen. When you see this you’ll know that the phone is up and running again. Don’t panic if the apple stays there for a moment or two, this is normal. Eventually you’re going to get the “slide to unlock” screen. Go ahead and slide that bar and you’re good to go!
On a side note, turning the iPhone off and then on did fix my friend’s problem. It’s always one of the first things I try whenever my iPhone goes buggy and more often than not it solves the problem. I suppose that’s what makes knowing how to turn the devices off such a good thing! Now in a preemptive strike (the alternative is locking down the comments so she can’t tell on me!) I’ll admit that I did in fact make a funny “shooop” sound as I pushed the button and showed my friend how to slide and then shut the phone down. Yes, I am that cool and I do come with my own sound effects. I can’t seem to adequately explain a technical solution without them!
By yousef on Feb 12, 2012
its great article, but i have a problem, i am not able to slide, any arrows in my phone :S what shall i do plz help
By Heather Leister on Feb 12, 2012
What do you see on the screen when you hold down the power button on the top of the phone?
By Cathy on Feb 24, 2012
Thank you So MUCH! Sound really simple, however for the life I couldn’t figure out how to shut down my phone.
By Jackie on Mar 2, 2012
How can i get free apps on my iphone without haven an itunes app? I
To make an itunes app its asks for a credit card n i dnt have one.
By Lynn on Mar 18, 2012
i installed a free police scanner app, and can’t seem to get it to turn off when i was done, any ideas? I didn’t know how to turn off my phone until i read your how to’s on that. so far it’s seemed to help. Thank you for all your help
By Heather Leister on Mar 18, 2012
Lynn – Try this….Exit out of the app and then double tap the home button. You’ll get a row of apps at the bottom of your screen. The police scanner app will probably be one of them. Now tap and hold on it until it wiggles and you see the red delete dash in the corner of the app icon. Tap on the red dash and that will shut the app. For more info try this post: http://www.theiphonemom.com/?p=6653
By Heather Leister on Mar 18, 2012
Jackie – We did it for our kids. When you set up the account there’s an option to choose “none” as your payment option. You’ll be able to download free content but prompted to enter payment info. if you try to purchase something that costs money. Here’s the link to the Apple Support page about it. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2534
By Rocky Garcia on Mar 23, 2012
I seem to be having a diiferent issue. My slider button will not illuminate. However it will end the call. I’m also not able to see the ignore or answer screen. I have done both a hard and soft reset and still not able to fix.
By Roseanne on Apr 13, 2012
I am 65 and forgot how to power off the phone. ty for this info. 2 days and I am hooked on it,it is so much fun.
By joyce Burns on Apr 30, 2012
I believe I used to be able to turn my screen off on my I phone 4 when I wanted to listen to a video or movie, but not watch it on the screen. This is not a downloaded movie, but a live streaming video. I would hit the on/off button on the top and it would switch off the screen but I could still hear the video. This no longer works and I am wondering why or if I am not remembering correctly how I used to do this. Thanks for any help
By Heather Leister on May 1, 2012
Hmmm – I’m not 100% sure but maybe check in your general settings to see when your auto-lock is set to go on. Maybe it got switched to “never”?
By joyce Burns on May 3, 2012
Thanks Heather, but that is not the problem. It is set for one minute. This problem began I believe when I updated either to the 5 or 5.1 operating system on my I phone4 so Apple I think changed something. There is a way to turn off the screen for downloaded movies by double clicking on the home button, sliding all the way to the left to where the play pause button is and controlling the video there. When one double clicks on the home button the video playing pauses and I restart it by hitting the play arrow control on the bottom and then hit the on/off button on the top of the phone. The audio will continue and the screen goes off. This works for downloaded movies or You tube videos, but not streaming video from netflix or dish TV. It is a wonderful feature that allows me to listen to a streaming movie or live TV while conserving power when I cannot watch it. Dish network via their sling allows me to access live or recorded TV via their sling adaptor and I often listen while I walk. With the screen continuously on in my pocket the phone gets very warm. This was not a problem when I could turn the screen off and just listen. Very disappointed that this ability to turn the screen off at will is not an option any more for me. If there is a trick to do this still I have not been able to figure it out.