While you won’t require it straight away, you should know the process to force restart your shiny new iPhone SE since it might come in handy if the phone ever freezes or hangs, starts behaving strangely, stops responding or you can’t turn it off and on.

Please note that force restart, force reboot, or hard reboot, all mean the same thing and you will see these phrases used interchangeably.

With the launch of iPhones with Face ID in 2017, Apple has changed the process of force restarting the iPhone. So if you’re upgrading from the first generation iPhone SE, pressing and holding both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button won’t force restart your iPhone SE. Apple has also changed some terminologies since the launch of iPhone X. The button on the right-hand side is now called the Side button instead of the Sleep/Wake or Power button.

How to Force Restart, Hard Reboot, or Force Reboot iPhone 11

Follow these steps to force restart, hard reboot, or force reboot your iPhone SE (2nd generation).

Step 1: Quickly press and release the Volume Up button.

Step 2: Quickly press and release the Volume Down button.

Step 3: Press and hold the Side button.

Step 4:  You will see the Slide to Power off button, but continue holding the Side button until you see the Apple logo.

That’s all, your iPhone SE will restart and will prompt you to “Swipe up to unlock”.

While not usually required, as I had mentioned earlier, a hard reboot can be useful if your iPhone SE isn’t responding, can’t turn it on or off, straight up freezes or hangs, crashes, starts behaving strangely, or just stops responding.

Let us know in the comments below why you needed to force restart your iPhone SE, and if it helped.