When you’re caught in a dark or dimly lit place, the iPhone’s built-in flashlight can definitely come in handy. Whether you’re trying to find your keys at the bottom of your purse after a night out, or trying to see under the couch when you can’t find the remote, it’s a feature that most of us use pretty regularly.
You likely know how to turn your iPhone’s flashlight on, but how do you turn it off when you’re done using it? Thankfully, it’s just as simple. Here’s what you need to know (along with a nifty trick to make going dark again even quicker).
How to turn off the flashlight on an iPhone with Control Center
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Wake up your iPhone’s screen by tapping the screen, pressing the lock button, or pressing the home button. Note that you do not need to unlock it or go to the home screen where all of your apps are visible in order to use the flashlight app.
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Swipe up from the bottom of your screen (for iPhone 8 or earlier) or down from the top-right (for iPhone X or later) to bring up the iPhone’s Control Center.
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Tap the flashlight icon, which will be highlighted when in use, so that it’s no longer highlighted and becomes dark gray. Your flashlight is now turned off. The flashlight button will be a dark gray when it’s turned off. William Antonelli/Business Insider
How to turn off an iPhone by swiping to the Camera app
If the above, very straightforward method of turning off your iPhone’s flashlight isn’t simple enough for you, there’s an even easier trick you can use to get the job done.
Simply wake up your iPhone’s screen and swipe very slightly left as if you were going to open the iPhone’s camera (which will also turn off the flashlight). Just starting to open your camera will turn off the flashlight. Jennifer Still/Business Insider.
Swiping fully left on your screen opens the iPhone’s camera. In this case, you’re not swiping far enough to open the camera, but your phone doesn’t know that, so it turns off the LED flashlight anyway. Pretty cool, huh?
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• If you’ve ever discovered that the flashlight on your iPhone was suspiciously turned on after pulling the device from your pocket, you are far from alone.
• Some people have been alerted by strangers on the street that the mini searchlight on their phone is beaming for the world to see. Others report having looked down to discover the flashbulb shining through their clothing.
• Either way, no one is ever thrilled to find out that their expensive smartphone’s battery is being unwittingly drained by a feature that can’t be uninstalled.
• So far, 488 iPhone users have reported the problem to Apple, asking the tech giant how to remove the fussy shortcut from the main screen entirely. If you don’t have this problem, you probably have a pre-iPhone X device – and more control of when you let your little light shine.
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• Sacramento comedian Morgan Lujan, 28, said that the flashlight on his iPhone XS Max seems to turn itself on at least once a day. “It’s interesting that the camera shortcut on the other side of the phone is never triggered. For some reason, it’s always the flashlight.”
• Toussaint Campbell, 21, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, said that he accidentally triggers the flashlight on his iPhone XS “all the time. When I’m just walking with my phone or holding it, my hand just so happens to be all over the screen. People ask me all the time, ‘Do you know your flashlight is on?’ I’ve gotten used to it.”
• Other iOS users have taken to Reddit and MacRumors to express their grievances over the easily triggered light beam.
• Twitter is also a hotbed of commentary on the topic:
• “The flashlight on the iPhone X turns on by itself. Then you have to turn it on and off to get it to go off. I’m so confused,” writes Twitter user @ericasaysyes.
• “Having an iPhone X makes me feel like an old lady because I’m always accidentally turning on my flashlight,” writes Twitter user @glnchlochlo.
• “My fav feature of the new iPhone is how simple it is to accidentally turn on the flashlight,” writes Twitter user @Nickwiger.
• Solution to Apple’s iPhone problem? It just needs lower pricing, analysts say
• The problem seemingly started in 2017 with the release of the iPhone X, when Apple installed the hard-pressed flashlight and camera shortcuts right on the lock screen.
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• The issue continued in 2018 when Apple introduced the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR to the masses.
• The ever-present flashlight icon is located at the bottom left-hand corner of your smartphone, so when you grip the phone face-up with your right hand, your thumb can easily come in contact with the shortcut, whether intentionally or not.
• Your palm comes in contact with the screen when you grip the phone face down, which can also trigger the flashlight.
• So, what’s the solution?
• Currently, there’s no way to remove the flashlight icon from the lock screen – we’ve tried. However, there are a few ways to turn the light off quickly if you turn it on accidentally.
• For one, you can ask Siri to turn it off. Any of the following commands will do:
• “Hey Siri, turn on/off the flashlight“
• “Hey Siri, enable/disable the torch“
• “Hey Siri, flashlight on/off“
• “Hey Siri, torch on/off“
• However, the voice assistant does need an internet connection to interpret flashlight commands.
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• An even faster and more discreet way to kill the torch is by slightly swiping left on the lock screen. A half-swipe is enough. If you use too much motion, you will open the Camera app.
• Lastly, when the flashlight shortcut is activated, you can simply hold down the icon until the flashlight turns itself off.
• Does your smartphone do something weird? Let Dalvin Brown know on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown
• It’s just the light on the back of your iPhone, yet that flashlight is remarkably flexible — and there are so many ways to turn it on or off quickly.
• Apple first added an LED light to the back of its iPhone 4 in 2010. Before then, you could get apps that turned your iPhone screen bright white. And after then you could apps that made the LED stay on instead of just flashing as you took photos.
• It wasn’t until iOS 7 in 2013 that Apple built flashlight controls into the system. But since then, you’ve had a fully-functioning and surprisingly versatile flashlight right there in your iPhone.
• The flashlight is versatile enough that you’ve probably switched it on from the lock screen by accident. But it’s also hidden enough that you may not have seen how to alter it, or how it can fit in with both Shortcuts and accessibility options.
• How to turn on the flashlight on the iPhone
• Tap on the lock screen to wake your iPhone, and then at bottom left there is a flashlight button. Tap and release it to turn on the flashlight.
• It’s a tap and release movement: the flashlight doesn’t switch on until you’ve released the button. And when you do, you also get a haptic confirmation that you’ve turned it on.
• You switch it off the same way, assuming you’re still on the lock screen. If you hold the iPhone too long, you’re likely to unlock it with Face ID and lose this option.
• In that case, you need to use Control Center for either turning the flashlight on or off. You can do this from the lock screen too, and there are benefits to it.
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• You can rearrange some Control Center controls to put the flashlight where you want
• But chiefly what Control Center does is give you the ability to turn the light on almost as quickly as you can from the lock screen. Swipe down on your screen from top right and tap on the flashlight icon to turn it on or off.
• If the light is off, that icon is a black button with a white flashlight on it. If the light is on, it’s a white button with a blue flashlight icon.
• There is one more direct option for using the flashlight. You can say “Hey, Siri, turn the flashlight on,” and it will do exactly that. Or off, if you ask.
• What more you can do with the flashlight controls on the iPhone
• The lock screen has no controls for the flashlight beyond on and off. However, if you use Control Center, you can press and hold on the icon to get a finer control.
• Specifically, if you press and hold then you get the option to adjust the brightness of the light. There are five settings, from nothing to the brightest, and you set the one you want by swiping up and down.
• Note that whatever you set the flashlight to with this control, that’s what you will get each time you use it until you positively choose to change it again. That includes whether you turn the flashlight on from Control Center, or the lock screen.
• Extra options for turning on the flashlight
• The lock center icon is quick, and the Control Center one doesn’t lag far behind. There is a quicker way to have the flashlight turn on, though, and that’s via a Back Tap.
• If you have an iPhone 8 or later, and it is running iOS 14, then you can set it so that tapping two or three times on the back of the phone will immediately turn the flashlight on.
• You need to create a Shortcut to do it first, then tell the phone you want to run that when you tap.