To turn off an iPhone with Face ID, press and hold the side button and either volume button at the same time until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider to the right. On an iPhone SE, press and hold just the side button, then drag the same slider. If the buttons are broken, stuck or hard to press, skip them entirely: go to Settings > General > Shut Down and drag the slider there, or use the power control in Control Center. To turn the iPhone back on, press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears.
How to turn off an iPhone with Face ID
This covers the iPhone X and every Face ID model after it — the 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 families included. From Apple’s Turn iPhone on or off guide:
- Press and hold the side button (the long button on the right edge) and either volume button (on the left edge) at the same time.
- Keep holding until the sliders appear on screen, then let go.
- Drag the Power Off slider — the one at the top — to the right.
- Wait a few seconds while the screen goes black. The iPhone is off.
Why two buttons? On a Face ID iPhone, holding the side button alone calls up Siri, not the power screen — the volume button is what turns the hold into a shutdown request. That one change, made when the Home button disappeared, is the entire reason this question exists. One warning from experience with the gesture: let go when the sliders appear. If you keep holding both buttons past that point, the iPhone starts an Emergency SOS countdown instead, and if the countdown runs out it calls emergency services. Sliders on screen means fingers off.
How to turn off an iPhone with a Home button or an iPhone SE
Older models are simpler — one button does it:
- Press and hold the side button, then drag the Power Off slider.
That is Apple’s instruction for the iPhone SE, and it is the same action on the iPhone 8, 7 and 6 families, which put the button on the side. On the oldest models still in drawers — the iPhone SE (1st generation), iPhone 5 and earlier — the button is on the top edge instead of the side; the hold-and-drag is otherwise identical. No volume button is involved on any of these models, because their side or top button never doubled as a Siri button in the same way.
Which buttons does your iPhone use?
| Your iPhone | To turn it off | To turn it back on |
|---|---|---|
| Face ID models: iPhone X, XS, XR, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and later | Hold the side button + either volume button, then drag the Power Off slider | Hold the side button until the Apple logo appears |
| iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd generation), iPhone 8, 7, 6 | Hold the side button, then drag the slider | Hold the side button until the Apple logo appears |
| iPhone SE (1st generation), iPhone 5 and earlier | Hold the top button, then drag the slider | Hold the top button until the Apple logo appears |
| Any model, buttons broken or unreachable | Settings > General > Shut Down, or Control Center (below) | Side or top button — or plug it into a charger |
Two buttons that play no part in any of this, despite sitting near the ones that do: the Action button on newer Pro models and the Camera Control on the iPhone 16 family. Neither turns the phone off, in any combination.
How to turn off an iPhone without the buttons: Settings
This is the route to use when a button is broken, stuck, mushy, or simply hard to press through a heavy case — and it works on every model, as long as the touch screen responds. Apple lists it as a standard method, not a workaround:
- Open Settings.
- Tap General.
- Scroll to the very bottom and tap Shut Down.
- Drag the slider that appears to the right.
The iPhone turns off exactly as it does with the buttons. Nothing about this route is a lesser shutdown — same slider, same result, no buttons touched. It is also the easiest method to talk someone through over the phone, because “Settings, General, scroll right down, Shut Down” works even when you cannot see their screen or remember which model they own. If a button has failed for good, it is worth knowing before the repair that the phone can still be switched back on without it: plug it into a charger and it starts up on its own.
How to turn off an iPhone from Control Center
On current iOS versions there is a third route, and it is the quickest of the three once you know it is there. From Apple’s guide:
- Open Control Center — swipe down from the top-right corner on a Face ID iPhone, or swipe up from the bottom edge on an iPhone with a Home button.
- Touch and hold the power control in the top-right corner of Control Center. A quick tap does nothing; it has to be a press-and-hold.
- Drag the slider to turn off the iPhone.
This control arrived with the redesigned Control Center, so an iPhone on an older iOS version may not show it — on those phones the buttons and the Settings route above are the options, and both still work. Control Center is a busy panel — it is the same place the Screen Recording control lives, the one covered in how to screen record on iPhone — so if the corner of yours looks crowded, the power control is the small icon at the very top right.
How to turn your iPhone back on
Turning back on is one action on every model:
- Press and hold the side button (the top button on the oldest models) until the Apple logo appears, then let go.
- Wait for the Lock Screen.
- Enter your passcode. After any startup, the iPhone asks for the passcode once before Face ID or Touch ID will unlock it — that is normal security behaviour, not a fault.
If the side button is broken, plug the iPhone into a charger instead; a powered-off iPhone starts up when it begins charging. And if you hold the button and nothing happens at all — no logo, no sign of life — leave it on the charger for a while before concluding anything. A battery that has run completely flat needs some charge before the phone can start, and a phone that will not start even after charging is a battery or hardware question, not a buttons question: how to check battery health on an iPhone explains what the health percentage does and does not tell you.
Turning off is not restarting — and neither is a force restart
Three different actions get mixed up under the word “off,” and picking the wrong one wastes time:
- Turn off, then on again — an ordinary restart, done in two steps. Apple suggests exactly this as the first response when an iPhone is not working as expected: turn it off, turn it back on, and see whether the problem survives.
- Force restart — for an iPhone that is frozen and will not respond to the slider at all. Apple’s force restart guide gives the sequence for current models: press and quickly release the volume up button, press and quickly release the volume down button, then press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears — Apple notes the hold can take longer than ten seconds. Nothing is erased; the phone simply restarts. Note that a force restart brings the phone back on — it never leaves it off. If your real goal is a phone that stays off, force restart is the wrong tool.
- Erase / factory reset — wipes the phone completely and returns it to its setup screen. That is a different job with data-loss consequences, done from Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone — Apple’s Erase iPhone guide is the reference for it. Turning an iPhone off never deletes anything; erasing is the action that does.
A related mix-up: a quick press of the side button only locks the screen and puts the phone to sleep. The phone is still on — calls, alarms and messages all still arrive. A dark screen is not an off phone, and “I turned it off” explains many missed alarms that were never actually at risk, because a truly off iPhone does not ring its alarms, while a merely locked one does.
Frequently asked questions
How do I turn off an iPhone 13, 14, 15 or 16? The same way as every Face ID model: hold the side button and either volume button together until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider. There is no per-model difference inside the Face ID family — the 13, 14, 15 and 16 all use the identical combination, and so do the Pro and Pro Max versions.
How do I turn off my iPhone if the screen is broken or frozen? If the screen is frozen but the buttons work, force restart it: quick-press volume up, quick-press volume down, then hold the side button until the Apple logo appears. Be aware of what that gives you — a restarted phone, not an off one. If the screen’s touch is dead but the display shows an image, no documented shutdown route works, because every route Apple provides ends with dragging a slider; the force restart is the practical answer until the screen is repaired.
How do I turn off an iPhone with a broken side button? Use Settings > General > Shut Down and drag the slider, or the Control Center power control — neither touches the buttons. To turn it back on afterwards, plug it into a charger. And set up the button-free routes before a failing button dies completely, while the phone is still easy to operate.
Why does holding the side button open Siri instead of turning my iPhone off? Because on Face ID models Apple assigned the long-press to Siri. The power screen only appears when a volume button is held with the side button. It feels like a trick the first time; it is actually the documented design, unchanged since the iPhone X.
Does turning off an iPhone delete anything? No. Turning off, restarting and force restarting delete nothing — your photos, apps and settings are untouched by all three. The only action in this area that deletes data is Erase All Content and Settings, and it asks for your passcode and confirms before it runs.
This article is general information, based on Apple’s iPhone User Guide pages linked above and checked in November 2026. If a menu or icon on your phone differs slightly, your iOS version is the likely reason — the button combinations and the Settings > General > Shut Down route have been stable for years.