There’s a good chance you’ve accidentally turned on your iPhone’s flashlight when you pulled it out of your pocket. It can drain your battery if you don’t turn it off immediately.
Fortunately, there are several ways to easily disable the flashlight on your iPhone. These methods include using your Control Center, the Lock screen, and Siri.
The Control Center
You can turn the flashlight off on your iPhone with a few simple taps and swipes. It’s a great way to avoid having to unlock the iPhone or find your flashlight app, especially when you need to do something in the dark.
The Control Center is a feature of iOS that gives you direct access to important settings by swiping up from the bottom of your screen. It’s available on all iOS models, including the latest iPhone X and iPad Pro.
On iOS 7 through iOS 9, the Control Center slid up from the bottom of the screen and featured a blurred background. This gave a layered transparency effect that made it easier to see what was on the Control Center page.
Now, you can also open the Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of your iPhone’s screen. This works on all iOS models, except the iPhone 5 and later, which do not have a physical home button.
When the Control Center opens, you’ll notice a segmented bar on the left side of the screen with three buttons on it. The top two buttons control the brightness of the flashlight, while the lower one controls whether the light is on or off.
If you want to turn the flashlight on, press and hold the icon on the left side of the bar. Once you’ve pressed the icon, it will turn on (it will turn back off again, however).
To turn off the flashlight, tap and hold the same icon and press and release it again to turn it off (the flashlight icon will turn back to dark gray). You can do this even if you are on the Lock screen or using Siri.
The Lock Screen
If you have an iPhone Xs, Xs Max, or Xr, you can turn the flashlight off on your phone with two simple shortcuts. One uses Siri, while the other is available using the built-in control center.
The first way is to long-press the flashlight icon on your lock screen with your finger, and a slight haptic buzz will tell you when to release it. Repeating the process turns the flashlight off.
However, if you want to turn the flashlight on and off more quickly, there are a few other ways to do it. You can use a shortcut, use the control center, or even create a custom action on your device.
In the case of a shortcut, you can create a new action in the Shortcuts app. Once you’ve done this, you can link the action to a back tap. This will make it much faster to toggle the flashlight on and off from your lock screen.
You can also create a shortcut that allows you to quickly turn on the flashlight by long-pressing it with your finger. This works for all iOS models, including those with a home button.
To create a shortcut, you need to open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone and tap “My Shortcuts”. You can then select a ‘Turn On Flashlight’ action.
Once you’ve created this action, you can then tap the ‘Set’ button to select which shortcut to associate it with. Eventually, the shortcut will appear in your iPhone’s menu when you press on it.
Siri
Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant, was introduced as an app for iOS in February 2010. Two months later, it was acquired by the company and integrated into iPhone 4S, which was released in October 2011.
Siri is based on machine learning technologies that are designed to recognize specific patterns and phrases within your voice. When you speak a command or request to Siri, it collects the audio and converts it into a data file that it sends to the company’s servers. Once the file is in place, it goes through a series of flowcharts to answer your question or request.
In addition to Siri, Apple also has a series of other features available on its devices such as Maps and the ability to play games. You can also set up reminders to be sent directly to your phone, or use Siri’s location to tell it where you are and what you are doing.
Using Siri is simple, but it does require an Internet connection. This is to ensure that Siri can access and interact with all of the Apple-supplied apps on your iPhone or iPad.
Once you have the device connected to the Internet, you can activate Siri by pressing and holding the Side button on an iPhone X or later model or the Home button on earlier models. You can also say “Hey Siri,” which will open the app.
After you have Siri activated, simply ask it to turn on the flashlight and it will do so automatically. It will also tell you that it has done so.
If you want to make the process even easier, you can create a shortcut to toggle the flashlight on and off. The shortcut will appear in the Control Center on your iPhone, and you can toggle it on and off using a single tap of the screen.
The Home Screen
If you’re an iPhone X or later user, you can swipe down on your screen to access Control Center and tap the flashlight icon once to turn it on and again to turn it off. You can also set it to change brightness levels if you hold it down with your finger and then swipe up or down.
You can’t remove the flashlight shortcut from your lock screen, though. It’s there because Apple added the “Raise to Wake” feature in iOS 16. This lets you activate your phone automatically when you lift it without tapping it, which means that if you accidentally touch the flashlight button on your lock screen while someone else is looking at your phone, you may be able to turn it on.
But if you want to stop this annoying shortcut from popping up every time you wake your iPhone, you can disable it by simply changing the “Display & Brightness” settings in Settings. Then, you’ll no longer see the flashlight shortcut on your lock screen.