Apple
What to Do If Your iPhone Won’t Turn On
It happens more often than you think, but if you ever come across an unresponsive iPhone, here’s what to do if your iPhone won’t turn on.
It can happen at any time. You’ll be sitting there minding your own business and then you decide to check your iPhone, only to discover that it doesn’t respond to anything you do. Pressing the home button doesn’t do anything and pressing the power button gives you negative results.
At this point you’re probably wondering what the heck do you do, and that’s a very valid question to ask yourself. Luckily, there are a few things you can try in order to get your iPhone to turn on and respond to your actions.
The good news is that your iPhone is unlikely to be completely dead, as in it turned into a paperweight, so there’s nothing to worry about if this ever happens to you. And even if it did, hopefully you took advantage of AppleCare+ and bought it for your iPhone.
In any case, here are a few things you can try out if your iPhone won’t turn on.
Charge It Up
This can happen in the mornings when you first wake up. You’ll go to check your iPhone and notice that it won’t respond because it’s very possible that the battery died at some point during the night.
Of course, if your iPhone has a little bit of juice left, the device will boot up partially and show you a low battery icon, but sometimes it can go completely dead and all you’ll get is a black screen.
If this happens, it’s a good idea to plug in your iPhone to charge for 10 or 15 minutes. This will give it enough juice to power up completely.
However, don’t plug it in and try to power it up right away. Nothing will happen, as the battery needs a bit of time to get recharged.
If this doesn’t work, then move onto more drastic measures.
Hard Reset
It’s possible that your iPhone could have plenty of battery life left and the device still doesn’t turn on and respond to anything that you do, which is why a hard reset is the next solution that you should try out.
To hard reset your iPhone, simply hold down the home button and the power button at the same time and wait for an Apple logo to appear in 10-20 seconds before releasing both buttons.
From there, wait a little bit for your iPhone to reboot and you should be greeted with the lock screen. Hard resetting your iPhone is the equivalent of cutting all power to a device, like removing the battery or unplugging the cable if it doesn’t have a battery. However, since the iPhone doesn’t have a removable battery, this is the alternative.
It’s also known as “power cycling,” which you’ve probably done many times with your router. Hard resetting your iPhone is the same idea.
If your iPhone eventually turns on and gives you an error or tells you to plug your device into iTunes, you’ll want to restore your iPhone in iTunes in order to get everything back to normal.
Restore Your iPhone
When you go plug your iPhone in and open up iTunes, you’ll get a pop-up message that tells you there’s a problem and that you’re required to restore or update your iPhone. Restoring will completely wipe your iPhone, but hopefully you’ve been proactive enough to back up your iPhone every now and then.
Click Restore and iTunes will begin to restore your iPhone and get it working again. The process could take a good 20 minutes or so, especially since it has to download the latest iOS version, which can be a couple of gigabytes in size.
After the process, your iPhone should be working again, and you can now restore a backup to get all of your apps and settings back.
kayla
11/24/2015 at 7:25 pm
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02/14/2017 at 7:22 pm
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akimaster
12/28/2015 at 12:13 pm
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Leslie
01/28/2016 at 2:30 pm
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!!!!! :)
harae
02/20/2016 at 10:32 pm
mannn… thank you
Olivia
03/08/2016 at 2:39 pm
My phone is showing the apple icon but then it just turns off again. Any advice?
Catie Slye
06/08/2016 at 10:51 pm
Mine too. Did you fix it?
Carrie lowe
03/19/2016 at 3:23 pm
My iPhone was on charge and took it off it went to black screen and held the power and home button won’t come on. And kept it on charge over night still didn’t come on what should I do
TJ
04/02/2016 at 8:21 am
i have the same issue as Carrie… i had my ph plugged in all night… got up the phone worked… but a short time later i went to use the phone and it’s just a black screen and won’t reboot when i hod the home button and button at the top… i’ve held it for at least 30 secs and nothing happens
Amanda
04/02/2016 at 9:32 am
OMG WHOEVER MADE THIS WEBSITE YOU ARE A TOTAL LIFESAVER!!! My mom and my grandmom both texted me this morning, as they tend to do every Saturday morning, and without this, I wouldn’t have seen any of them.
Danielle
04/10/2016 at 12:53 pm
I tried all of those they won’t wor
Kristina
04/17/2016 at 7:36 am
I have the same problem as tj and Carrie what do we do?
Sarah
05/04/2016 at 4:59 pm
my iphone 5s has been unable to charge for the past days, I plug it in with the charger, the icon with the little charger comes up, it doesn’t charge, then when I try again, nothing comes up and I’m left with a black screen, any advice?
natty
08/08/2016 at 3:59 pm
my phone isnt turning on and it hasn’t been for four days tried all these methods to useful website though