How to Force Restart or Soft Reset Your iPhone

If your iPhone,  iPad, or iPod touch is frozen and does not allow you to turn it off and on, you can do a force restart or soft reset of your Apple device to fix the problem without loosing data on the device.

The steps to force restart an iPhone depend on the model of your device. You can find out the model of your iPhone from this Apple Support article.

How to Force Restart iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone 11, or iPhone 12

Follow the following steps: 

1. Press and quickly release the volume up button
2. Press and quickly release the volume down button
3. Then press and hold the side button
4. When the Apple logo appears, release the side button.

See diagram below for positions of the buttons on iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone 11, or iPhone 12.

How to Force restart iPhone 8 or iPhone SE (2nd generation)

Follow the following steps:

1. Press and quickly release the volume up button
2. Press and quickly release the volume down button
3. Then press and hold the side button
4. When the Apple logo appears, release the side button.

See the diagram below for positions of the buttons on iPhone 8 or iPhone SE (2nd generation)

How to Force Restart iPhone 7

Follow the following steps:

1. Press and hold both the volume down button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time
2. When the Apple logo appears, release both buttons.

See the diagram below for the positions of buttons on the iPhone 7

How to Force restart iPhone 6s or iPhone SE (1st generation)

Follow the follow steps:

1. Press and hold both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time
2. When the Apple logo appears, release both buttons

See the diagram below for positions of the buttons.

A force restart or soft reset will fix many issues that cause your iPhone to freeze and refuse to restart or turn off and on.

However, the problem may sometimes be more serious and will require you to do a factory reset of your iPhone to fix the issue. Doing a factory reset will wipe all the data on your iPhone, so I strongly advise backing up data on your iPhone before attempting a factory reset.  I will cover how to do a factory reset of your iPhone in a separate article.