How to call emergency services from your iPhone’s lock screen

This short guide is a reference tool to help refresh your knowledge or practise what you have learned in the How to call emergency services from your iPhone’s lock screen online video course.

What is Emergency SOS?

Emergency SOS allows you to quickly contact emergency services, even if your phone is locked. This feature:

works in most countries
automatically calls the correct emergency number for the country you’re in
shares your location with emergency services, even if Location Services on your phone is turned off.

A mobile phone doesn’t need a SIM card to make an emergency call. It only needs to be charged and within range of a mobile network.

Before using Emergency SOS, you need to turn it on:

From the Home screen, tap the Settings app.
Scroll down and tap Emergency SOS.
Turn on Call with Hold and Release. This allows you to press and hold the Side button and one Volume button to start an emergency call. The call is made when you release the buttons after the countdown.
You can also turn on Call with 5 Button Presses. This lets you quickly press the Side button five times to start the emergency call.
Send SOS to emergency contacts allows your phone to automatically send an SMS with your location to trusted people when you make an emergency services call. You can learn more about this feature in the How to send an SMS to an emergency contact on an iPhone course.

To activate Emergency SOS from your phone’s lock screen:

Quickly press the Side button five times.
The Emergency SOS slider will appear, and a countdown will begin.
To connect faster, swipe the slider to the right.
If no action is taken, your phone will automatically call emergency services at the end of the countdown.
If you activate Emergency SOS by mistake, tap the Stop button during the countdown to cancel. If the call starts, tap the red End Call button to hang up.