iPhone Randomly Going Into Airplane Mode? Solved!

Airplane Mode is useful if you’re on a plane, but if it randomly turns on throughout the day, it can prevent you from receiving messages and notifications.

As a long time iPhone user, I’ve had plenty of time to get accustomed to operating these devices. While the Control Center is normally incredibly convenient and intuitive, it can oftentimes be so easy to access that you might inadvertently enable one of the options available from the Control Center.

Still, if this is something that happens to you, once you understand why it happens and how you can prevent it from happening, you’ll get back to using your iPhone like normal in no time.

Reasons Your iPhone Keeps Going Into Airplane Mode

Having an iPhone that randomly goes into Airplane Mode is a very common problem. 

This can be incredibly annoying as if your iPhone is in Airplane Mode without you knowing, it can prevent you from receiving important messages and notifications that you would otherwise expect to receive immediately. 

However, despite what you might think, it isn’t some random software glitch or hardware issue that’s causing this to happen. 

9 times out of 10, it happens because you simply enabled Airplane Mode from your iPhone’s Control Center without noticing. But how could this be happening so often and without you noticing?

If you don’t know what Control Center is, it is an easily accessible menu on every iPhone that allows the user to quickly enable features like Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, WiFi, Flashlight, and more without going navigating to an app or going through the settings menu. 

Even though you might not know what it is called, there is no doubt that you probably use it all of the time. It can be accessed by swiping down from the top right corner of the screen.

However, having so many features so easily accessible from the Control Center can become a problem if they are so accessible that it is easy to toggle them on and off without meaning to. 

This is especially true when you consider that your iPhone doesn’t even need to be unlocked to access the Control Center.

This is oftentimes exactly what happens to many iPhone users when it comes to Airplane Mode, the flashlight, camera, and many more, so if you find that you are inadvertently enabling Airplane Mode, you should try to pay more attention to the way in which you handle your iPhone. 

In my experience, putting my iPhone back into my pocket is when this is most likely to happen. 

As I put my iPhone into my pocket, my finger or my pocket puts enough pressure on the screen to pull down the Control Center menu as the phone slides in. 

Once the Control Center menu is open, it only takes one conveniently placed touch to enable Airplane Mode from there, making this an incredibly easy thing to have happen over and over again without intentionally doing so. 

If you keep your iPhone in a purse, this can also happen quite easily, as again all that needs to happen is a few well placed bumps or touches from something else and Airplane Mode can easily be enabled without your knowledge. 

Still, however annoying this issue is, there is a simple thing that you can do to ensure that this problem doesn’t persist.

How Can I Prevent My iPhone From Going Into Airplane Mode Inadvertently?

Now that you know what the cause of the issue is we can get into the details of how to prevent it from continuing to happen in the future.

The main problem here is that the Control Center can be accessed without your iPhone needing to be unlocked. If you could only access Control Center after unlocking your iPhone, it would almost immediately eliminate the possibility of this happening.

Luckily, ever since iOS 13, there has been an available option that allows you to disable the ability to access Control Center from the Lock Screen, and it is easily accessible in your iPhone’s Settings menu. 

So, how do you get started with disabling this feature? First, you’ll need to navigate to your iPhone’s settings menu. 

Then, once you’ve opened up Settings, scroll down until you see an option that says Face ID & Passcode. If you have an older device that doesn’t have Face ID, this option will say Touch ID & Passcode.

Click on whichever options your iPhone has and then enter your passcode when prompted. From here you will be granted access to the Face ID/Touch ID & Passcode menu. 

Scroll down until you see a group of options labeled Allow Access When Locked. Here you will see multiple different features that you can access while your iPhone is still locked. 

Simply find the one that says Control Center and click the switch to toggle it off. 

This will prevent you from being able to access Control Center from the Lock Screen and should make it much harder for your iPhone to inadvertently enable Airplane Mode without your knowledge. 

Key Takeaways

• If your iPhone is going randomly going into Airplane Mode, it is most likely because you are inadvertently turning it on through Control Center.
• Control Center can be accessed by swiping down on the top right side of your iPhone’s screen.
• Control Center gives you immediate access to features like Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, WiFi, and the Camera.
• To fix the problem, simply go into Settings, scroll down to Face ID & Passcode, type in your passcode, and then toggle off the Control Center switch to disable access to the Control Center from the Lock Screen.