Help! How do I turn off my iPhone? | ZDNet

You’d think it would be easy to turn off your iPhone, right? Just press that power button, and job done.

Except that button you think is a power button — presumably because you press it to turn the iPhone on — is not a power button but a “side button.”

And pressing that side button on newer handsets doesn’t turn them off. Instead, it brings up Siri.

This explains the question that just dropped into my inbox:

How in the name of the power button’s ghost do your turn an iPhone off?

Good question!

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There are two ways.

The easiest way is to simultaneously press and hold down one of the volume buttons — up or down — along with the side button.

Yes, you have to press two buttons.

I guess Apple doesn’t think you’re going to want to turn your phone off that often.

Hold long enough — a few seconds — and the power sider will appear, along with the really cool but noisy emergency SOS slider at the bottom.

There’s another way to power down an iPhone, a way that I think is quicker and easier.

Tap on Settings > General and scroll all the way down to the bottom and tap Shut Down.

So, there you go. You learned two things today. The power button is, in fact, a side button, and shutting down an iPhone is more complicated than you guessed it was.