Pressing and holding Volume Up and Power buttons on either side of the iPhone will bring up the shutdown screen
Apple’s iOS 18 brings a new and more convenient way to shut down your iPhone — but it’s no more obvious than the existing options. Whether you’re packing the iPhone away or taking it to be repaired, here’s everything you can do.
There’s a significant difference between just putting an iPhone to sleep versus turning it off completely. The former is simple to do — you just tap the side or sleep/wake button on the right-hand side of the iPhone to put it to sleep.
Powering down the iPhone, by contrast, involves a short procedure to confirm that you want to switch off the device down completely. Beyond the different ways you can first initiate the shutdown, you must then always confirm it by swiping an on-screen slider from left to right.
Many of the methods described below have worked since at least iOS 11, if not earlier. A few, however, are much more recent, and they’ve been added because they can be more convenient.
They’re just not so convenient that Apple actually tells you about them.
Using the iPhone’s physical buttons
You can initiate shutdown on previous and also on current iPhone models by holding down the Volume Up on the left side together with the Side button on the right of the chassis. This brings up the shutdown confirmation screen, where you can release the buttons and swipe to confirm.
This method should also work in situations where you need to force-restart your iPhone. This hardware method should also work if the screen is frozen and not responding to touch controls.
Using hardware buttons and Siri
In other situations, you can also opt to use Siri to help you power off your device. If you have turned on Siri’s voice control, you can simply press and hold the Side button and say “Siri, power off.” Siri will respond by asking you to tap an onscreen dialog box to confirm that you do want to power off the device, and once you’ve tapped that, your iPhone will turn itself off.
You may well, though, be in a situation where it’s not appropriate for you to speak aloud to Siri — or for Siri to reply to you, either. However, there is a way to shut down your iPhone using Siri and neither talking to it, nor having it even bleep in response.
To do this, you take advantage of the fact that Siri can be summoned by pressing and holding the side button. But instead of just doing that, do this:
- Briefly press the Volume Up button
- Briefly press the Volume Down button
- Press and hold the Side button
You will see the shutdown confirmation slider appear at the top of the screen. Swipe to the right to confirm, and the iPhone will shut down.
Software shutdown for all iPhones
If you have an iPhone that can’t run iOS 18, all of these hardware methods will shut down your phone. In addition, though, all iPhone have yet another option. You can:
- Open Settings
- Tap on General
- Scroll to Shut Down
New options in iOS 18
All of these still work with iOS 18, but this latest version of iOS gives you an additional option that is surely the most convenient. It’s arguably the easiest to find, too, once you know where it is.
It’s in Control Center. That feature has been radically redesigned in iOS 18 such that you can now have several pages of controls.
But still at the top right of Control Center, regardless of what page you’re on, you can now find a power off icon. It’s the regular power off symbol of a circle with line coming up out of the top.
So swipe down on your iPhone screen to get Control Center. Then press and hold on that icon until you’re shown the control saying “slide to power off”.
If you’re counting, that makes a total of five different ways to shut down your iPhone — and Apple doesn’t tell you about any of them.
The new Control Center option is the closest to being discoverable without you being told. But if you have been using Apple devices for long enough, this will all remind you of how Steve Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that a morbid fear of death was why he disliked putting off switches on products. Seriously.
