The camera LED flash on the iPhone doubles as a flashlight and may come in handy in your everyday life. You can use the flashlight or torch on your iPhone to illuminate a dark area or a room with low lighting.
Whatever the use case may be, the flashlight on iPhone is bright enough to help you in most situations. Perhaps, if you have just got a new iPhone then do check this guide to use the flashlight on iPhone 12.
How to turn off Flashlight on iPhone 12
There are different ways to turn the flashlight on or off on the iPhone 12, 12 Mini, or 12 Pro. Besides iPhone 12 series, you can use the below methods on iPhones with Face ID support including iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone X, or an iPad Pro. Let’s get started.
Using the Control Center
- Swipe down from the top-right corner of your iPhone to open the Control center.
- Tap the Flashlight button to turn on the The torch icon turns blue when the flashlight is enabled.
- Tap the Flashlight icon again to turn off the flaslight.
Turn Off the Flashlight Using the Lock Screen
Whenever your iPhone screen turns on after standby mode, you’ll see a lock screen. To turn off the flashlight from this lock screen, tap and hold the flashlight icon located in the lower-left corner of the screen.
After a moment, you’ll feel a thump or slight vibration in the iPhone itself letting you know it’s been turned off. To turn it back on, press and hold the flashlight icon again, and you’ll be lighting up the darkness in no time.
How to turn off an iPhone by swiping to the Camera app
If the above, very straightforward method of turning off your iPhone’s flashlight isn’t simple enough for you, there’s an even easier trick you can use to get the job done.
Simply wake up your iPhone’s screen and swipe very slightly left as if you were going to open the iPhone’s camera (which will also turn off the flashlight). Swiping fully left on your screen opens the iPhone’s camera.
In this case, you’re not swiping far enough to open the camera, but your phone doesn’t know that, so it turns off the LED flashlight anyway.
Pretty cool, huh?
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The flashlight is versatile enough that you’ve probably switched it on from the lock screen by accident. But it’s also hidden enough that you may not have seen how to alter it, or how it can fit in with both Shortcuts and accessibility options.
How to turn on the flashlight on the iPhone
Tap on the lock screen to wake your iPhone, and then at bottom left there is a flashlight button. Tap and release it to turn on the flashlight.
It’s a tap and release movement: the flashlight doesn’t switch on until you’ve released the button. And when you do, you also get a haptic confirmation that you’ve turned it on. You switch it off the same way, assuming you’re still on the lock screen.
- If you hold the iPhone too long, you’re likely to unlock it with Face ID and lose this option.
- In that case, you need to use Control Center for either turning the flashlight on or You can do this from the lock screen too, and there are benefits to it.
What more you can do with the flashlight controls on the iPhone
The lock screen has no controls for the flashlight beyond on and off. However, if you use Control Center, you can press and hold on the icon to get a finer control.
Specifically, if you press and hold then you get the option to adjust the brightness of the light. There are five settings, from nothing to the brightest, and you set the one you want by swiping up and down.
Note that whatever you set the flashlight to with this control, that’s what you will get each time you use it until you positively choose to change it again.
That includes whether you turn the flashlight on from Control Center, or the lock screen.
Extra options for turning on the flashlight
The lock center icon is quick, and the Control Center one doesn’t lag far behind. There is a quicker way to have the flashlight turn on, though, and that’s via a Back Tap.
If you have an iPhone 8 or later, and it is running iOS 14, then you can set it so that tapping two or three times on the back of the phone will immediately turn the flashlight on.
You need to create a Shortcut to do it first, then tell the phone you want to run that when you tap.
How to set up a Shortcut to turn on the iPhone flashlight
- Open Shortcuts and tap the + sign to create a new one.
- Tap Add Action.
- Enter “flashlight” into the search box.
- When it appears, tap on Set flashlight
- This defaults to turning the light on, so you’re done, save the Shortcut.
- Optionally, repeat the same steps but choose Turn flashlight Off before you save.
There’s nothing to stop you using these Shortcuts directly. You won’t find a benefit to opening Shortcuts, finding the one to turn it on, and then running it.
However, you can have Siri launch any Shortcut you choose. And the step for turning on or off the flashlight can be just one of many in a Shortcut.
That can include having a single Shortcut that asks you if you want to turn the light on or off.
It’s up to you whether you do that and have to specify each time, or whether you have one Shortcut for one, and another for off.
How to setup Back Tap to turn the iPhone flashlight on
- Go to Settings
- Scroll to Accessibility and tap
- Tap Touch
- Tap on Back Tap
- Choose either Double Tap or Triple Tap
- Wait while iOS retrieves a list of all your Shortcuts
- When you can see it, tap on your On Shortcut
You could set a double-tap to run the Shortcut that turns the flashlight on, and the triple-tap to run the one that switches it off.
Or vice versa. It’s a shame that the Back Tap can’t be a toggle, or that Apple doesn’t include the flashlight in the system options you can access directly with it.
How to turn the flashlight off
Everything so far has been about turning the flashlight on or off. There is one option that is just for turning it off, though.
When you’re at the lock screen and the flashlight is on, swipe from right to left on your iPhone screen to bring up the camera. The moment you do that, the flashlight switches off.
It would, too. As it’s the camera that the light was first created for.
Over the years since iOS 7, that one little light for adding a flash when you take a photo has become a remarkably useful flashlight too.
Conclusion :
You can turn off the flashlight directly from your iPhone’s lock screen. Tap and hold the flashlight icon. It’s at the bottom-left corner of the screen. After a second or two, the flashlight will turn off.
FAQ ( People Also Ask ) :
Q. Does iPhone flashlight turn off by itself?
Ans – For mine, it’s whenever I turn on the flashlight from the control menu and then turn the screen off (since I don’t need it on to do whatever task is at hand), the flashlight will automatically turn off after a period of around 10-20 seconds.
Q. How do I control the flashlight on my iPhone?
Ans – Use Control Center on an iPhone with Face ID or an iPad Pro
Swipe down from the upper-right corner to open Control Center on your iPhone or iPad.
Tap the Flashlight button .
To turn off the flashlight, tap the Flashlight button. again.
Q. Can I leave iPhone flashlight on all night?
Ans – Long-life low-power LED lights make best use of limited battery resources. I would avoid using your iPhone’s flashlight overnight. Its battery life could suffer for so many cycles of charging.
Q. Why does iPhone 13 have flashlight?
Ans – The iPhone 13 flashlight might be enabled by a camera app or accidentally from the Lock Screen, but there are several ways to switch it off. The iPhone 13 is a powerful smartphone with great cameras and a bright LED flash but, sometimes, all the user needs to do is just switch off the flashlight.
Q. Where is my flashlight setting?
Ans – To use the flashlight, open the Quick settings panel by swiping down from the top of the screen using two fingers. Next, tap the Flashlight icon to turn the light on or off. Depending on your setup, you may need to swipe left to see the Flashlight icon.