If your Apple iPhone 7 is frozen and won’t turn off, here’s what you can try.
- Press and hold the “Sleep“/”Wake” button on the top of the device for about 10 seconds. See if the red slider eventually appears so that you can shut it off or force quit the offending app by pressing and holding the Home button.
- Press and hold the “Sleep“/”Wake” button and the “Volume Down“ button simultaneously for about 10 seconds. Hopefully, the Apple logo will appear and the iPhone 7 will finally turn off.
Note: The “Sleep/Wake” button is located on the right side of the iPhone 7.
There have heard a few users report occasions where they’ve had to simply let the battery run all the way down before the device will work again. I’m afraid if the steps above don’t work, that is your last resort.
Motti Shneor says
Just went through this nightmare. I bought a new iPhone SE for my child, after the previous one was stolen. In the midst of the initial setup, I provided my child’s AppleID then started recovery from an iCloud backup, and waited the 2 hours or so…. yet all the applications were “Waiting”, without any app continuing installation. after about 10 hours I gave up, and wanted to reset the device and start again. I chose “Reset all” in the Settings app, and…
iPhone had a tiny running wheel at the top bar, seemingly forever. I could open Apple Apps, I could do most everything – but no app would still install, and I could no longer turn the device off, or reset it.
After some more (ahh…. 12) hours, I tried again to shut down/off/dead the device to no avail. I used all the above techniques, but battery was fully charged originally, and on a new device, it does live for over a day.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, the red slider appeared. It seems the device was updating the system without asking me for permission, or ever notifying me, and while it does that – you can’t shut down.
Boy, do I despise the “Apple” of today. what miserable user interface. They could at least provide some note “You can’t shut down the iPhone right now, because of a XXXX process that must complete.”
Kokos mom says
It works! Thank you