How to Setup and Use iPhone Emergency SOS Feature

Apple has finally delivered the SOS Emergency feature to all iPhone users that are using iOS 11 on their device. Before iOS 11, Apple offered this feature only in limited geographies.

Apple has been bolstering up this feature across its device ecosystem via various patents since quite some time. This offering is another safety oriented feature that Apple has introduced apart from the Do Not Disturb While Driving”. In this short article, we show you how to set up and use the new SOS Emergency feature on your iPhone.

Step – 1 Tap on Settings > Emergency SOS

Step – 2 Enable the ‘Auto Call’ feature on the Emergency SOS settings

This setting makes your iPhone automatically call emergency services when you click the sleep/wake button five times in a row.

Step – 3 Prevent Unintentional Emergency Calling

In order to avoid accidentally calling the emergency services, You can enable the Countdown Sound feature as well. This will make sure that your iPhone plays a warning sound while the feature is counting down to call 911.

While you are exploring this new Emergency SOS feature settings on your iPhone, we urge you to review your emergency contacts that you have set up in the health app and make sure that it is up to date.

In order to review your emergency contacts, tap on ‘Set up Emergency Contacts in Health”. This feature updates your contact records associated with your medical id.

If you have not setup the Medical ID on your iPhone, we recommend that you look at our detailed article here.

The other important element that needs reviewing is for users that use their Apple Watch along with their Apple iPhone. Since the Watch also features an Emergency SOS service,  review its settings and ensure that they align with your iPhone settings.

We hope that you take time to explore the Emergency SOS feature on your iPhone. And that you set it up for those situations when you need it the most. We also recommend that you take time to set up the Medical Id features on the health app as they come in real handy to folks that provide you EMS services.