What Are These Symbols On My iPhone?

Ever wonder what the arrow at the top of your iPhone means? Or green dot, orange dot, padlock with a circle around it, moon, spaceship or bed mean?

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some symbols that you may see on your iPhone and what they mean.
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Now I know people often have a lot of questions about the different symbols they may see at the top of their iPhone or in other places. You probably know what a lot of the symbols at the top of your iPhone mean already. You've got the bars here telling you the strength of your mobile signal. You've got these lines here telling you the strength of your wi-fi signal. You've got your battery here and you've got your clock on the left. 
You also may see symbols telling you what type of mobil connection you have. For instance, 5G, 5GE, LTE, 4G, and all of that. Sometimes you'll see the word Wi-Fi up there indicating that you're using Wi-Fi calling. 
But sometimes you'll see other symbols. Like, for instance, this little arrow here next to the time. Sometimes it will be on the right instead of here on the left depending on the model of iPhone and the version of iOS you're using. If you look at the top of my iPhone screen right now you're going to see a little arrow right next to the time. On older versions of iOS and on some other models you may see that over here on the right instead. Sometimes it is solid. Sometimes it is hallow. Sometimes it is not there at all. This symbol simply means that location services are being used. An app or the system itself is taking your current location and using it in some way. It could be something as benign as the Weather App just checking to see if there is any emergency weather information. Or it could be the Maps App giving you directions or the Health App tracking your steps. Things like that. As a matter of fact so many apps and functions of our iPhone use Location that it is rare to not see this on at all. Solid means that some app is actively using the location right now. Whereas hallow means that some apps are occasionally using the location right now. If you really wanted to get into the details you can go into Settings and then look for Privacy and then you could see, under Location Services, all the different apps that somehow use Location and you can customize when each one has access to that location. But most users don't need to worry about any of this really. Most apps, of course, have a good reason. The Clock App needs to know what time zone you're in. The Camera App needs to put GPS information on photos and videos that you take. Things like that. 
Now you may also see some Dots at the top. Let's go into the Camera App. When I do so notice there's a little green dot here at the top. The green dot tells you that the camera is being used. Now it is kind of obvious when you're in the Camera App and you could see what the camera is seeing right on your screen but other apps may not show it as easily. So the green dot is a way to know that the camera is being used. If you see an orange dot that means the Microphone is being used. For instance, in the Voice Memo's App here when I start recording you'll see that yellow slightly orange dot at the top. In addition when you do screen recording on you iPhone you'll notice here that the time has a background color. The background color of red telling you the screen is being recorded. It will be purple if you're using SharePlay to share your screen with somebody else and green if your  iPhone is being used as a personal hotspot at the moment. 
Now a bunch of other symbols that people ask about are actually part of the same feature. So I'm going to go into Control Center here by dragging down on the top right. I'm going to turn Focus Mode On to Do Not Disturb. Then I can see here in Control Center there's a little moon symbol right here. You may or may not see that at the top of the screen as well. Depends on whether or not your iPhone has a notch. But that moon symbol is just saying that you're using Do Not Disturb. If I were to switch to another mode, like for instance let me switch to my Gaming Mode right here, now you could see that the little rocket ship is there. It's using the icon of the Do Not Disturb mode. Notice you may have icons, like for instance Sleep Mode here, that's got a little bed in it. I know a lot of people ask what's the little bed mean when it's at the top of your iPhone. That just simply means you're using the Focus Mode that has that icon. 
Another symbol people wonder about is a padlock with a circle around it. That's the same as the symbol right here in Control Center. It's the Portrait Orientation Lock. If I turn it On it turns on Portrait Orientation Lock and you could see the symbol right here. Now this is useful because some apps only have Portrait Mode and some apps have Portrait and Landscape Mode. But if you have Portrait Orientation Lock turned On everything stays in Portrait Mode. So when you see this symbol here and you're turning your iPhone into Landscape Mode and nothing is changing you know that it might be because you've got the lock turned on. Not that the app doesn't support Landscape Mode. So go back into Control Center, turn this Off and then see if the app will work differently in Landscape Mode. 
There are various other symbols that you may see from time to time. Apple actually has a handy page where they run down a whole bunch of these symbols. It's not complete and some of these symbols you won't find anymore in the current version of iOS but it is a handy to checkout in case you see a symbol that you don't recognize and that I haven't covered. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 4 Responses to “What Are These Symbols On My iPhone?”

Michael R Ross

9 months ago

I didn't see VPN mentioned. My niece's kid had it showing up on his school supplied iPad. The school district has locked down these iPads so I told her it was benign (I hope) and the school district had them going through a Virtual Private Network for security/tracking and parental controls.

TimA

Status icons and symbols on your iPhone
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207354

Terry-Lynne Morehouse

What are the 3 round red lights found top of phone in the black dip area, between the time display and the cell/wifi/battery display for? You can only see them with sunglasses on and when sunshine on screen.

Gary Rosenzweig

Terry-Lynne: Do you mean in the center, in the notch? Those aren't lights, they are variety of sensors like the front-facing camera, the true-depth camera (for Face ID), the ambient light sensor and some other things depending on the model. Perhaps you are seeing the refection of light in the optics of these sensors.

What Are These Symbols On My iPhone?

Comments: 4 Responses to “What Are These Symbols On My iPhone?”

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