Uh oh! Seeing SOS on iPhone is never welcome, and while it's not a great sign, it doesn't mean you've accidentally triggered an emergency alert.
The SOS we're talking about here appears in the status bar at the top of your iPhone where your cellular connection level would typically display. If you are wondering how to activate an SOS alert on your iPhone, we've got you covered, but in this article, we're just looking at what the SOS on iPhone status bar means and how to fix it.
What does SOS on iPhone mean?
The SOS icon appearing in the status bar of your iPhone indicates that you no longer have a proper cellular connection, which leaves you only able to complete an SOS call or text to emergency services.
On an iPhone 13 or earlier if you pass out of reach of even SOS service you will see it shift to "No service." The iPhone 14 introduced satellite SOS capability, so unless you are spelunking or deep-sea diving you shouldn't encounter that message.
SOS on iPhone due to a service outage
The most frequent reason that we see widespread interest in SOS on iPhone is when there is a network service outage. In February 2024 an AT&T outage triggered the SOS icon on potentially millions of users phones and it happened again in May of 2024. While those were large-scale outages, there are many smaller such events every week.
In these circumstances, there is nothing you'll be able to do to fix the problem, but unless you're in a location with wifi available or you are with other people with your same cellular provider, it's hard to know that this is the case. If you do have access to wifi you should check downdetector, which is a site that specially tracks reports of network outages and the major cellular carriers are almost always right on the homepage. So while these outages are common, we are mainly focused on localized individual issues that can trigger this status, as these are the problems we can help identify and fix with you.
How can you fix SOS on iPhone?
The easy answer is to return to an area with stronger service. However, if you are in an area where you know you have had a connection in the past it is possible that the phone simply isn't properly registering the connection.
In this case, swipe down from the upper-right corner of your display and tap on the green Cellular Data icon to shut it off, then tap it again to turn it back on. If that isn't enough to jog your iPhone back into remembering that it should have a proper connection then soft reset your iPhone.
You do this by simultaneously holding down the side button and the lower volume button for about 3 seconds and it will bring up a new screen with two sliders and a cancel icon. Slide the top power icon to the right and your phone will power down. After it's done shutting off just wait a few seconds and then hold the side button to power it back up again.
That should be it, if you are in range of a connection your phone should find it and banish the SOS from your status bar.
If you are repeatedly encountering this problem in areas where you shouldn't have connectivity issues, your phone may either have a faulty SIM card or a faulty SIM card slot. This will require a trip to your carrier or the Apple store. If you have an iPhone XR, XS, XS Max up through the current iPhone 15 models, you should consider switching to eSIM. My daughter's iPhone 13 Pro had precisely this issue and while we had a bit of an eSIM disaster getting things moved over initially, it has worked perfectly since then with no SOS message in a year now after seeing it almost daily.
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