Apple offers a quick and easy way to hang up / decline calls on the iPhone. Simply press the Side button (Power button) on your iPhone, and it ends the call, be it an incoming or an ongoing call.
While this is a convenient feature to have, it can sometimes quickly become annoying. If you’ve got one of the full-screen screen protectors on your iPhone, which obstructs the proximity sensor’s functionality and prevents it from turning on the screen when you pull it away from your ear, you’d know what we mean.
Fortunately, Apple’s finally heard user complaints and responded by offering a toggle switch to change this behavior. Here’s how to use this switch and prevent accidental call hang-ups on iPhone.
How to Disable Side Button From Ending an Active Call on iPhone
Apple lets you disable the call hang-up behavior of the Side button on the iPhone with iOS 16. If you wish to prevent accidental hanging up on your iPhone, first, update your iPhone to iOS 16 and then follow these steps:
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Go to Accessibility and tap on Touch under PHYSICAL AND MOTOR.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the Touch settings page.
- Toggle on the switch for Prevent Lock to End Call.
Once done, when you now press the Side key on your iPhone while you’re on an ongoing call, be it a regular Phone call, a FaceTime call, a WhatsApp call, or any other calling app, it won’t terminate the call and cause an interruption.
No More Accidental Call Hang-Ups on iPhone
While Apple’s brought a tonne of features to the iPhone with the iOS 16 update, it’s also thrown a bunch of some really useful features in the mix that subtly improve the user experience on the iPhone.
Being able to prevent the Side button from accidentally hanging-up calls is among many such features. We recommend turning it on so that pressing the Side button on your iPhone amid calls accidentally or otherwise won’t end the call and interrupt your conversation.
Bear in mind, though, that having this feature enabled on your iPhone also means you won’t be able to decline incoming calls by pressing the Side button, as you could do earlier. So if this matters to you more, you should probably avoid enabling this feature on your iPhone.