This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Solving iPhone Problems
Even a device as reliable as your iPhone can sometimes run into problems. Fortunately, the solutions to most problems you encounter are simple. If a simple solution doesn’t work, a great deal of detailed help is available from Apple, and even more is available from the community of iPhone users.
The problems that you can address with the simple steps described in this section vary and range from such issues as the iPhone hanging (won’t respond to commands) to apps not working as they should. Use the following tasks to address problems you encounter.
Restarting an App
If an app you are using locks up, displays an error, or isn’t working the way it should, try shutting it down and restarting it.
Press the Touch ID/Home button twice (all models except iPhone X) or swipe up from the bottom of the screen and pause toward the middle of the screen (iPhone X). The App switcher opens.
Swipe to the left or right until you see the app that has frozen.
Swipe up on the app to shut it down.
Press the Touch ID/Home button (all models except iPhone X) or tap outside the App Switcher (iPhone X) to move back to the Home screen.
Open the app again. If it works normally, you’re done. (It’s generally a good idea to restart your iPhone when you’ve had to force an app to quit.)
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Restarting Your iPhone
Whenever your iPhone starts acting oddly, restarting it should be the first thing you try. It’s easy to do and cures an amazing number of problems. To restart your iPhone, do the following:
Press and hold the Side button (on 5s and SE models you use the Wake/Sleep button instead) until the slider appears on the screen.
Drag the slider to the right. The iPhone powers down and the screen goes completely dark.
Press and hold the Side button (use the Sleep/Wake button on a 5s or SE model) until you see the Apple logo on the screen. The iPhone restarts. When the Home screen appears, try using the iPhone again. If the problem is solved, you’re done.
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Resetting Your iPhone
If restarting your iPhone doesn’t help, try resetting your iPhone using the following steps:
On the Home screen, tap Settings.
Tap General.
Swipe up the screen until you see the Reset command.
Tap Reset.
Tap the Reset command for the area in which you are having problems. For example, if you are having trouble with Wi-Fi or other networking areas, tap Reset Network Settings, or if you decide your Home screens are a mess and you want to go back to the default layout, tap Reset Home Screen Layout. If you are having lots of issues in multiple areas, tap Reset All Settings or Erase All Content and Settings (be careful because this erases everything on your iPhone).
If prompted to do so, enter your passcode; if you don’t see a pass-code prompt, skip to the next step.
Tap the confirmation of the reset you are doing. The reset is complete and that area of the iPhone is reset to factory conditions.
Reconfigure the area that you reset. For example, if you reset your network settings, you need to reconnect to the networks you want to use. If you did a Reset All Settings or Erase All Content and Settings, you basically start from the beginning as if your iPhone was just taken out of its box.
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Restoring Your iPhone
The most severe action you can take on your iPhone to try to fix it is to restore it. When this happens, the iPhone is erased, so you lose all its contents and its current iOS software is overwritten with the latest version. If you have added information to your iPhone since it was last backed up (when you last connected it to the computer or it backed up to your iCloud account), that information is lost when you restore your iPhone—so be careful before doing this. If none of the other tasks in this section corrected the problem, restoring your iPhone should.
To restore your iPhone, perform the following steps:
Open the Settings app.
Tap General.
Swipe up the screen until you see Reset.
Tap Reset.
Tap Erase All Content and Settings.
If you are prompted to allow a current process to complete, such as backing up or syncing documents, tap the Finish XYZ Then Erase, where XYZ is whatever process is ongoing, such as Backup. If you are prompted to back up the iPhone, do so and let the backup finish before continuing. If you don’t want to allow the current process to continue, tap Erase Now instead.
Enter your passcode at the prompt.
Tap Erase iPhone.
If you are really sure you want to proceed, tap Erase iPhone again.
If prompted to do so, enter your Apple ID password and tap Erase.
Your iPhone starts the restore process. You see the Apple logo and progress bar on the screen while the process is underway.
When the iPhone’s software has been erased and re-installed, you see the Hello screen. Press the Touch ID/Home button or Side button to start the restore process.
Follow the prompts to work through the steps. You’ll choose a language and region/country. (From this point on, the steps are not shown in figures.)
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If you aren’t using the Quick Start option, tap Set Up Manually.
Follow the onscreen prompts to do the basic configuration of your iPhone, which includes choosing a Wi-Fi network, configuring Touch ID/Face ID, and creating a passcode.
At the Apps & Data prompt, choose how you want to set up the iPhone. Tap Restore from iCloud Backup to use the most recent backup in your iCloud account to restore it. Tap Restore from iTunes Backup if you have backed up the phone using iTunes on a computer. Tap Set Up as a New iPhone if you want to start completely over and reconfigure the phone manually. Tap Move Data from Android if you want to move your data from an Android account.
Follow the onscreen prompts to complete the option you selected in step 14. Restoring from an iCloud backup is described in the following steps, but the other options are similar.
Enter your Apple ID and password and tap Next.
If two-factor authentication is enabled, enter the code you receive on one of your other devices.
Accept the terms and conditions of the license agreement by tapping Agree. The information from your iCloud backup is copied onto the iPhone.
Tap the backup you want to use to restore the phone; typically, you want to use the most recent backup. However, if a restore doesn’t solve the problem, you can try an earlier backup to see if that fixes it instead.
Tap Continue.
Follow the remaining onscreen instructions to configure certain aspects of your iPhone, including Apple Pay (you have to confirm the security code for each card configured with Apple Pay) and App Analytics. You might or might not be prompted to configure these or other areas, as it depends on how your iPhone was configured before the restore.
When the process is complete, your iPhone restarts. (You might be prompted to reenter you Apple ID when you unlock it.) At that point, the iPhone should be just like it was the last time you backed it up, hopefully without the problem you were trying to solve by restoring it. If restoring the phone doesn’t solve the problem, see “Getting Help with iPhone Problems” later in this chapter for suggestions.
Finding a Missing App
I’ve had more than a few emails from people on whose phones an app icon seems to have disappeared. In many cases, these were core iPhone apps that can’t be removed from the iPhone, such as Settings or Photos. In almost all of these cases, the app’s icon had inadvertently been moved into a folder and so was not visible in its expected location. If this happens to you, perform the following steps to restore the app to where it should be:
Move to a Home screen.
Swipe down from the center top area of the screen. The Search tool opens.
Tap in the Search bar and enter the name of the app that is missing. As you search, you see a list of items that match your search. If the app is found, you know it is still on the iPhone and its icon was just accidentally misplaced; you can continue with these steps to find it.
If the app you are looking for isn’t found, it has been deleted from the iPhone and you need to reinstall it. Download and install it again using the App Store app (don’t worry; if it has a license fee, you don’t need to pay for it again). (Installing apps is covered in Chapter 4.)
Tap Search.
Note the current location of the app, which is shown on the right side of the screen. If no location is shown, the app is on one of your Home screens, in which case you need to browse through the screens to find it, and you can skip the rest of these steps.
Tap Cancel. You move back to the Home screen.
Open the folder where the app is currently located.
Touch and hold on the app icon until the icons start jiggling.
Drag the app’s icon out of the folder and place the icon back where you want it to be (refer to “Customizing Your Home Screens” in Chapter 5, “Customizing How Your iPhone Looks and Sounds,” for details of moving apps on the Home screens).
Press the Touch ID/Home button to lock the icons in their current positions (all models except iPhone X).
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Making an iPhone’s Screen Rotate Again
If your iPhone stops changing from horizontal to vertical orientation when you rotate the phone, you probably have inadvertently enabled the orientation lock. Unlock it again by doing the following:
Look at the top of the screen. If you see the Orientation Lock icon, the iPhone’s orientation is locked.
Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen (all models except the iPhone X) or swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen (iPhone X) to open the Control Center.
Tap the Orientation Lock button. Note that when Orientation Lock is on, the button’s graphic is red. When it is off, the button’s graphic is white.
Confirm that the Orientation Lock icon at the top of the screen has disappeared. The iPhone now changes orientation when you rotate it.
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Blocking Unwanted Calls, Messages, or FaceTime Requests
If you want to block calls, messages, or FaceTime requests from someone, do the following:
Open the app through which the person you want to block is trying to contact you; you can use Phone, Messages, or FaceTime. These steps show the Phone app, but blocking people with the others is similar.
Tap Recents.
Tap the Info (i) icon for the person you want to block.
Tap Block This Caller.
Tap Block Contact. The contact becomes blocked, and you no longer receive calls, messages, or FaceTime requests from them. When the person who is blocked tries to contact you, the attempt fails, but the person doesn’t know that the reason it failed is that you blocked him.
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Solving the Quiet iPhone Problem
If your iPhone stops ringing or making other sounds you believe it should, perform the following steps:
Make sure the iPhone isn’t muted. The Mute switch on the left side of the iPhone should be in the position toward the front of the phone. If you see color in the switch, the phone is currently muted. Slide the switch toward the front of the iPhone to unmute it. You should hear sounds again.
With the iPhone unlocked, press the upper volume switch on the left side of the iPhone to make sure that the volume isn’t set to the lowest level. As you press the button, a visual indicator of the current volume level appears on the screen. As long as you see a few “dots” on this indicator, you should be able to hear sounds the iPhone makes.
Make sure that the iPhone is not in Do Not Disturb mode by opening the Control Center and ensuring that the Do Not Disturb icon is off (the moon is white); if it is turned on (the moon is purple), tap it to turn it off. In Do Not Disturb mode, sounds are not made, such as a ring when you receive a phone call.
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Try a different app or task. If you aren’t hearing sound from only one app and everything else sounds normal, you know there is a problem with that app. Try deleting and reinstalling it. If you still don’t hear sound from any app, you know the problem is more general.
Move to Sounds & Haptics in the Settings app.
Make sure the volume slider is set to at least the middle position.
Tap Ringtone.
Tap one of the default ringtones. You should hear it. If you do, you know the problem is solved. If not, continue.
If you aren’t hearing sounds when the EarPods aren’t plugged in, connect the EarPods and repeat the sound you should be hearing. If you hear the sound only when the EarPods are plugged in, try removing the EarPods and plugging them back in a few times to see if that solves the problem. If not, your iPhone needs to be serviced by an Apple authorized repair center, or you can take it to the Genius bar in an Apple Store.
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