How to Get Your iPhone Out of SOS Mode

If you are one of the millions of Verizon customers whose phones are currently stuck in “SOS Mode,” there’s some good news and some bad news. The good news: Getting your phone out of SOS Mode is a few steps away. The bad: Solving the underlying Verizon outage, and thus, getting your phone service working again, is another story.

First, some business. This should only be affecting iPhone 14 and above users or Android users with Satellite SOS. It’s a bug of the SOS feature, where once you’ve activated SOS (and yes, I know you probably didn't do so, which is what makes this more painful), the SOS won’t go away until the phone finds service again. Since service is out, that’s a tricky situation. 

Consider first: Do you really want to fix the problem? As long as the outage persists, you can use SOS mode to call emergency services if you need it. It doesn’t help if you need to call your boss, though.

Even once Verizon restores service, it might take a few ticks for your phone to get back on board, so trying these steps might solve the problem. 

• Turn your cellular data on and off. This is usually in your settings, and works like a soft reset, forcing the phone to look for a signal again. 

• Restarting your phone has the above effect, plus resets any cache or apps that were running before. 

• While it’s unlikely to be the fix Verizon rolls out, you might as well see if there’s a software update.  Obviously, this will only work if you’re connected to wifi. Go to Settings > General > About.

• You can actually turn your cellular line off and on if you’re using an eSIM. Go to Settings > Cellular > your phone number and turn the line on and off. If you’re using a physical SIM card, take it out and put it back in. 

• You can try resetting your network settings, but this is a drastic action and since we know the SOS issue is likely related to the Verizon outage, you might not want to do so. If you do, all your networks and passwords for wifi, cellular and VPN will be toast.