Software tower · floor
On a recent phone of either kind, holding the power button no longer turns it off. That is not a fault and it is not the same change on both — but the result is the same confusion, and both makers publish the answer.
iPhone
two shapes, by model
Pixel
two shapes, by model
Set those side by side and the pattern is hard to miss. Both makers moved from one button to two on their newer models, and on both the second button is a volume one. Anybody whose phone was replaced in the last few years has a gesture in their fingers that belongs to the previous device.
There is also a difference worth noticing between the two. On the iPhone the sliders appear and you drag one; on the Pixel a menu appears and you tap Power off. Same idea, different last step — which is why an instruction that mentions dragging is an iPhone instruction.
This is the part that makes the button question optional. Settings → General → scroll down
→ Shut Down, then drag the slider. Or touch and hold in the top-right corner to open
Control Centre and drag the slider there. Neither depends on knowing which iPhone you have, and
neither needs two hands or a working button. The button combination is the part that changes
between models; the menu is the part that does not.“There are multiple ways to turn your iPhone on and off — you can use the
buttons on the side of your iPhone, or you can use the controls in Settings and Control
Centre.”
That is the practical answer for anybody who does not want to memorise a combination, and it is the one to reach for when a button is broken or awkward to hold. Two routes on the iPhone that work on every model, both of them a menu rather than a grip.
Google documents a way to give the button its old job back. On recent Pixels a long press on
Power does something else by default, which is why the gesture that worked for years now
appears to do nothing useful — and the fix is a setting rather than a different grip.
Once it is set, “press and hold the power button for a few seconds. Then, on your screen, tap
Power off.”“On Pixel 6 & later: To bring up the power menu when you press and hold the
Power button, go to Settings → System → Gestures → Press and hold the power button. Then,
select Power menu.”
The Pixel setting is the more interesting of the two, because it addresses the actual complaint rather than working around it. The button was reassigned; the setting reassigns it back. Google documents it in the same place as the power instructions, which is a fair admission that the change surprises people.
All three are documented separately by the makers, and all three get called turning the phone off.Three things that are not “off”
Turning it back on, and what it means when nothing happens. Both makers give one gesture: hold the power or side button until the logo appears. Google adds a detail for recent models — “On Pixel 6 & later: press and hold the Power button until you feel a buzz (up to 7 seconds in some situations)” — which matters because letting go at four seconds looks exactly like a phone that will not start. And both name the same first suspicion if it still does not: Apple, “you might need to charge the battery”; Google, “before you turn on your phone, charge it.”
One consequence of all this is worth stating plainly, because it changes what to search for. “My phone will not turn off” is usually a question about the model, not about the phone. The gesture that fails is almost always the right gesture for a different generation of the same device — and both makers publish the current one, by model, on a single page.
What this page will not do is cover every Android phone. Google publishes these instructions for Pixel, and other manufacturers put their own layer on top of Android with their own combinations and their own settings. The shape is usually similar and the detail often is not, and a page that pretended otherwise would be guessing on behalf of devices it has no documentation for.
Nor will it tell you how often to turn a phone off. Apple names one reason — something not working as expected — and Google names none. There is no published schedule to report.
The floors below take it three ways: the buttons, the routes that avoid them, and what to do when the phone will not respond at all.
Three ways in. If holding the button does nothing, the first is why.
One button on older models, two on newer ones, on both systems. The last step differs: a slider to drag on iPhone, a Power off to tap on Pixel.
Settings and Control Centre both turn an iPhone off, on any model. On Pixel, a setting restores what the power button used to do.
A frozen phone needs a longer hold than a working one, and both makers keep separate instructions for it. Charging is the first suspicion either way.
It will not give one button combination. Both makers publish two, split by model, and the one that fails is usually the right one for an older device.
It will not cover every Android phone. Google documents Pixel; other manufacturers add their own layer, and this page has no documentation for those.
And it will not treat a dark screen as a phone that is off. Google says one press of the power button is the screen, not the device. What holds instead is simple: the iPhone power-off combinations for models with Face ID and with a Home button, the Control Centre and Settings routes, the instruction to hold the side button until the Apple logo appears and the note about charging, the Pixel combinations for models before and after the Pixel 6, the Power menu setting under System and Gestures, the note that one press of the Power button turns the screen on and off, the restart and forced-restart holds with their timings, and the buzz on Pixel 6 and later are quoted from Apple’s and Google’s own documentation, listed below.
Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.
Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.
Written on 22 August 2026.
No affiliate links and no paid placements anywhere on this site. Nobody pays to appear here, and no company has seen this page before you did.
This is general information, not professional advice. Where a page touches money, health, safety or the law, it names its source and the date it was read — and your situation may still differ. See the privacy page and the cookie policy.