Well, you could try pressing the “home” key to return to the familiar home page, or you could press and hold the “sleep/wake” button (the thin button that sits on the top edge of the handset) to turn your iPhone off and on again.
Press and hold both the “sleep/wake” key (pictured here) and the home key to reset a frozen iPhone.
But what if the home and sleep keys aren’t responding, either?
Luckily, there’s another way to resuscitate a frozen, glitchy, or otherwise unresponsive iPhone: a so-called “hard” reset, which forces the iPhone to stop whatever it’s doing, shut down, and restart.
Think of it as waking your iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch) with a cold bucket of water rather than a gentle nudge—crude, but often effective.
Here’s how …
- Press and hold both the “sleep/wake” button (at the top of the iPhone) and the home button (below the screen) at the same time.
- After a few seconds, the screen will go blank; don’t worry, this is normal. Keep pressing and holding those buttons.
- After a few more seconds, the Apple logo should appear. Go ahead and release the buttons.
- Wait a bit longer, and your iPhone’s home screen should appear again. Phew!
Bonus tip
Only dealing with a single glitchy app rather than a completely locked-up iPhone? Here’s a few ways to get misbehaving app working again.
Looking for more iPhone tips? Click here!