How to Turn Off the Flashlight on an iPhone 12

The lock screen is the fastest way, but Control Center has the ability, too

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This article explains three ways to turn off the iPhone 12 flashlight and two suggestions for how to prevent it from happening in the future.

Just like the iPhone 12 offers you multiple ways to turn on the flashlight, it also offers multiple ways to turn it off.

One of the most common ways the iPhone 12 flashlight is accidentally activated is by the flashlight button on the iPhone's lock screen. In that case, here's how to turn off the flashlight:

Raise the iPhone, tap the screen, or press the Side button. All of these actions will cause the iPhone lock screen to light up.

The flashlight icon in the bottom left corner will be white to indicate the flashlight is on. Long press the icon until you feel the force feedback.

Take your finger off the screen and the flashlight will be turned off ( the icon will be gray as well).

Siri can do all kinds of things, including turning off the iPhone 12 flashlight once it's on. Just press and hold the side button to activate Siri and say "turn off the flashlight."

Another quick and easy way to turn of the iPhone 12's flashlight is to use Control Center. Here's how:

Raise the iPhone, tap its screen, or press the Side button. All of these actions will cause the iPhone lock screen to light up.

Swipe down from the top right corner to open the Control Center. The flashlight icon will be highlighted in white to indicate that the flashlight is on.

Tap the flashlight icon to turn off the flashlight (the icon will then turn back to dark gray).

The iPhone 12 flashlight can accidentally be turned on in a pocket or bag when there's an inadvertent press of the flashlight icon on the lock screen. To avoid that happening, you make it so the lock screen can't be activated just by tapping it or by raising the iPhone.

Tap Settings.

Tap Accessibility.

Tap Touch.

Move the Tap or Swipe to Wake slider to off/gray. When you do this, tapping the screen will not activate the lock screen. You will have to click the Side button to do that, which makes it harder for the flashlight button to be accidentally pressed.

Tap Accessibility > Settings to return to the main Settings screen.

Tap Display & Brightness.

Move the Raise to Wake slider to off/green. This requires pressing the Side button to activate the phone and prevents the lock screen from being activated by the motion of the iPhone. It should also reduce the likelihood that the flashlight icon is turned on accidentally.

An iPhone flashlight not working could be due to anything from a bug, to a hardware issue, to a change in settings. In order: Make sure the iPhone is charged, turn off Low Power Mode, close the Camera app, restart the iPhone, perform a hard reset, reset iPhone settings, and restore a previous backup.

The exact location of an iPhone's flashlight can be slightly different depending on the model, but it's always clustered with the phone's rear camera lenses. It typically looks like a white-ish dot that's smaller than the lenses themselves. Make sure not to look directly at the flashlight when turning it on, because it can be very bright.

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