How to Set Up Emergency SOS on iPhone, Activate and Use It

If you own an iPhone and looking to make it work for you in every uneven situation, we are here to guide you on how to use your iPhone in an emergency situation and make sure you are safe by using its SOS feature.

As most smartphones come with a built-in Emergency SOS feature, iPhone's Emergency SOS feature is a little bit different and a lot more secure than other smartphone manufacturers. Here we will walk you through the exact steps on how to set up, activate and use your iPhone Emergency SOS service.

How to Set Up Quick Emergency SOS on iPhone (New Devices)

If you are using iPhone 8 or a newer iPhone model such as iPhone X, iPhone 11, or iPhone 12 and later versions, you can follow these simple steps to understand how Emergency SOS works on the latest iPhone devices:

1. Press and hold the side button with any (up or down) Volume until the Emergency SOS slider appears.
2. Drag the Emergency SOS slider to call emergency services.

With this Emergency SOS slider, you can choose an emergency which you want to call to.

• If you continue to hold down the side button and volume button, instead of an emergency SOS slider, your iPhone will trigger a countdown and an alert sound (loud siren).
• If you hold down the buttons until the countdown of three to one ends, your iPhone automatically calls an emergency service.

This is how the iPhone Emergency SOS works on iPhone 8 and later devices.

How to Set Up Quick Emergency SOS on iPhone (old devices)

The fastest and best way to use your old iPhone (iPhone 7, iPhone 6, iPhone 5, or iPhone 4 versions) as a gateway to accessing emergency services in your locality is to set up Emergency SOS settings on iPhone, and here's how to do it quickly:

1. Open iPhone Settings
2. Go to Emergency SOS
3. Toggle on Call with Side Button 

Now you can press the side button or home button five times and your iPhone will call an emergency service without asking you to dial a number or unlock your device.

NOTE: When you press the home button or side button five times in a row, your iPhone will trigger a loud siren with a countdown from three to one. If you don't want such an option when calling an emergency service, you can turn it off. Just follow these simple steps: Open iPhone Settings tap Emergency SOS now Toggle off Countdown Sound.

After your emergency call ends, your iPhone will automatically send a text message to your emergency contacts with your current location (those contacts you can add as trusted contacts in iPhone settings). It will further help you by sending location-change updates to your trusted-contacts and you will get notified about 10 minutes later. This is a unique iPhone emergency SOS feature.

How to Add Emergency Contacts in iPhone

If you haven't added any emergency contact to your iPhone's emergency SOS feature, you should do it ASAP, and here's how:

1. Open the Health app on your iPhone and tap your profile picture.
2. Tap Medical ID available in the Health app. 
3. Tap Edit, then scroll to Emergency Contacts.
4. Tap the add button > Tap a contact, then add their relationship with you. 
5. Tap Done to save your changes.

This will help you to share your location and call your emergency contacts whenever you are in need.

With all of these awesome features, you can also stop sharing your location as sometimes you may need such an option. iPhone will ask you to stop sharing your location every 4 hours in every 24 hours and you can simply tap the status bar then select "Stop Sharing Emergency Location" for not sharing your location updates with your trusted contacts.

You can also end a call (when you accidentally call emergency services) by tapping the cancel button on your iPhone screen and confirming that you don't need to call an emergency service. Not just this, if you don't want your iPhone to dial a number for Auto Call when you use Emergency SOS, you can turn it off by following the simple steps written below:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Tap Emergency SOS. 
3. Turn Auto Call on or off. 

These are some of the unique and wonderful Emergency SOS on iPhone features that you can use on your iPhone.

So, this is how you can set up, activate, and use a quick emergency SOS on your iPhone or iOS devices for calling emergency services or your loved ones when in need.