iPhone tower · floor
Two unrelated things on an iPhone are called SOS, and the answer to this question is completely different depending on which one is in front of you. One of them has no off switch at all.
Apple: “If your carrier’s cellular network is unavailable, iPhone displays [the SOS icon] and
attempts to route any emergency calls through other networks, if available.” This is a
report on your reception, not a mode you entered. There is no setting behind it, so nothing on
this page will remove it. It goes when your carrier’s service comes back. The button combinations that place an emergency call. These do have settings — two of
them, in one screen — and if your phone has been calling emergency services from inside a
pocket, this is the part you are looking for.SOS in the status bar
Emergency SOS, the feature
So the first thing to establish is which you have. Look at where the letters are. If SOS sits in the status bar at the top of the screen, next to where the signal bars normally are, that is the first kind and there is no setting to change. If instead your phone has placed a call you did not intend, or shown a countdown you had to cancel, that is the second kind and there are exactly two switches.
If it is the second and a call has already gone out, one instruction comes before everything else on this page.
Apple marks that one Important, and it belongs at the top of this page rather than the bottom.
It is worth reading twice, because it points the opposite way from what the situation suggests: the call stays open, and the explanation is given to a person rather than left to be guessed at. Apple does not say what happens if you hang up instead; it says what to do.“If an emergency call has been made and you don’t need emergency services, don’t
hang up. Wait until a responder answers, then explain that you don’t need help.”
Now the switches. Apple’s Emergency SOS settings live in one place, and it lists three things there.
Apple lists three items, and only the first two are switches.The whole of Settings → Emergency SOS
Of the two, Call with Hold and Release is the one that needs no sequence of taps — a hold on two buttons, then a release. Apple does not say what turning it off leaves behind, so this page will not either. What it does document separately is a route that does not depend on either switch: “On the Passcode screen, tap Emergency,” then dial the number. That one is reachable from a locked phone and is described on its own terms.
The other switch appears in Apple’s instructions as something you add: “you can enable iPhone to start Emergency SOS when you quickly press the side button five times. Go to Settings → Emergency SOS, then turn on Call with 5 Presses.” Apple does not publish which way either switch is set on a new phone, so the screen itself is the only place to find out.
India is documented separately. Apple gives the button combination for “all countries or regions except India” — hold the side button and either volume button — and then a different one for India: “Quickly press the side button three times until the sliders appear and the countdown on Emergency SOS ends.” It adds that on an Indian iPhone with Accessibility Shortcut turned on, the hold-and-release method works as well. So a set of instructions that does not match your phone may be the right instructions for somewhere else.
Back to the first kind of SOS. The letters in the status bar are not a mode and not a fault in the phone. They mean your carrier has no usable service where you are, and that the iPhone will try to put an emergency call through somebody else’s network instead. Apple’s wording is careful and worth keeping: the iPhone “attempts to route” those calls, “if available”. It is a better position than no service at all, not a guarantee.
What that also means is that the fix is not on this page. It is service — moving, waiting, or sorting out whatever has gone wrong with the line itself. A phone showing SOS in the status bar is a phone with a carrier problem, and the settings app cannot solve it.
Apple documents four consequences, and none of them are obvious from the screen.What happens after an emergency call, whether or not you meant it
The last of those four is the one worth carrying away even if none of the rest applies to you. After an emergency call, Apple says features that silence incoming calls may be disabled for a short period so that emergency services can ring back — which means a phone that was set up to stay quiet may not stay quiet, and it will not be a fault when it happens.
One more limit Apple states, and it is about when emergency calling might not work at all: some cellular networks “may not accept an emergency call from iPhone if iPhone isn’t activated, if iPhone isn’t compatible with or configured to operate on a particular cellular network, or (when applicable) if iPhone doesn’t have a SIM card or the SIM card is PIN-locked”. That is the manufacturer describing the edges of its own feature, and it is a better reason than most to leave at least one of the two switches on.
The floors below take it three ways: the status-bar kind and what sits behind it, the two switches and their neighbours, and what a phone does in the minutes after a call goes out.
Three ways in. The first question is only which letters you are looking at.
Not a mode and not a setting: a report that your carrier has no usable service here. The fix is on the network side, and these floors are the ones that touch it.
Everything Apple puts in the Emergency SOS screen, plus the neighbouring settings that decide what else your phone does without being asked.
Apple documents four things a phone does in the minutes afterwards, including texting your contacts and suspending the settings that keep it quiet.
It will not offer a way to switch off the status-bar SOS. Apple describes it as what the phone displays when your carrier’s network is unavailable, and a setting that removed the display would remove the information rather than the problem.
It will not recommend turning both switches off. Apple names the conditions under which an emergency call may not be accepted at all, which is a reason to keep a route open rather than close them all.
And it will not tell you to hang up on an accidental call. Apple says the opposite, and marks it Important. What holds instead is simple: the meaning of the SOS status icon, the instruction not to hang up on an accidental emergency call, the button combinations for India and elsewhere, the contents of Settings → Emergency SOS, the emergency-contact texts and location updates, the CDMA emergency call mode, the temporary disabling of Do Not Disturb, Silence Unknown Callers and Screen Time, the USB-C limit and the conditions under which a network may not accept an emergency call are quoted from Apple’s iPhone User Guide, 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.