iPhone: The Missing Manual

Reset: Six Degrees of Desperation

The iPhone runs actual programs, and as actual programs, they actually crash. Sometimes, the program you're working in simply vanishes and you find yourself back at the Home screen. (That can happen when, for example, Safari encounters some plug-in or data type on a Web page that it doesn't know how to handle.) Just reopen the program and get on with your life.

If the program you're in just doesn't seem to be working right—it's frozen or acting weird, for example—one of the following six resetting techniques usually clears things right up.

Note

Proceed down this list in order! Start with the easy ones.

• Force-quit the program. On an iPhone, you're never aware that you're "launching" and "exiting" programs. They're always just there, like TV channels, when you switch to them. But if a program locks up or acts glitchy, you can force it to quit. Hold down the Home key for six seconds.

  The next time you open that program from the Home screen, it should be back in business.

• Turn the phone off and on again. Try this one next if it seems something more serious has gone wrong. Hold down the Sleep/Wake switch for three seconds. When the screen says, "slide to power off," confirm by swiping. The iPhone shuts off completely.

  Turn it back on by tapping the Sleep/Wake switch.

• Reset the phone's hardware. And what if the phone is locked up so badly that you can't even turn it off? Then you'll have to shut it off by force. To do that, hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake ...