How to turn off Emergency SOS on an iPhone

Apple’s Emergency SOS characteristic is supposed to save lots of crucial time reaching emergency providers and contacts — units within the iPhone 15 and iPhone 14 lineups may even ship alerts through satellite tv for pc. But when the characteristic is being triggered by accident, say through Crash Detection, kids, or your pocket, you’ll be able to disable it (virtually) totally. Right here’s how.

QUICK ANSWER

To disable Apple’s Emergency SOS shortcuts, go to Settings > Emergency SOS and switch off Name with Maintain and Launch, Name with 5 Button Presses, and (when you have an iPhone 14 or iPhone 15 operating iOS 16 or later) Name After Extreme Crash. You may go away a number of of these choices on for those who’ve recognized {that a} explicit choice is inflicting you hassle.

JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS

How one can flip off Emergency SOS on an iPhone

Whereas there’s no common change, you’ll be able to accomplish comparable ends by toggling off all the characteristic’s activation choices within the Settings app.

Go to Settings > Emergency SOS.
- To disable handbook shortcuts, flip off Name with Maintain and Launch and Name with 5 Button Presses.
- If you wish to disable automated Crash Detection calling, flip off Name After Extreme Crash. Solely the iPhone 14 and later fashions operating iOS 16 and later provide this selection.

Observe that even with all these settings adjustments, you’ll be able to nonetheless launch Emergency SOS by means of the power-off display screen.

To succeed in that display screen on most iPhones (excluding something with a house button), concurrently maintain the facet button and one of many quantity buttons. Swipe the Emergency SOS slider to provoke a name.

How one can repair “SOS solely” drawback on iPhone

For those who’re seeing “SOS” or “SOS solely” in your iPhone’s standing bar, common mobile service is unavailable. Nevertheless, you might be able to make calls to emergency numbers like 911 or ship satellite tv for pc alerts when you have an iPhone 14 or later.

There are a number of potential fixes for the iPhone “SOS solely” difficulty:

Restart your iPhone: The primary troubleshooting step ought to at all times be to restart your system.
Transfer to a special space: For those who’re at present in a spot that doesn’t have reception, “SOS solely” is extra prone to seem. On this case, transfer to a special location with higher mobile protection.
Restart mobile information: In case you are in a well-serviced space, contemplate restarting your mobile information. To do that, go to Settings > Mobile and toggle Mobile Information off for 10 seconds, then again on once more.
Activate roaming: You probably have no service whereas touring, go to Settings > Mobile > Mobile Information Choices and guarantee Information Roaming is enabled, at the least for those who’re not apprehensive about roaming charges.
Examine your SIM card: For those who’re nonetheless utilizing a bodily SIM card as a substitute of an eSIM, attempt popping it out, checking for harm, and placing it again in if it’s okay.
Examine in case your provider has points: If the “SOS solely” discover stays and also you’ve adopted the steps above, the issue probably resides along with your provider. Downdetector is a superb software to test in case your community supplier has any widespread outages that will have an effect on your service.