Why does my iPhone show the airplane mode icon on some screens even though it is turned off?

Hi there, ProjectDJC.

I see that your iPhone is in Airplane mode even when you haven't activated it. I'm glad to help.

Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch -- Restart your iPhone. Once it's returned to the Home screen, see if the Airplane appears.

How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch -- If you're still seeing the Airplane, please be sure to have a fresh backup to keep your personal information safe.

If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch -- When an application isn't working as expected, a good step is deleting and reinstalling the app. Since you can't delete the operating system on your iPhone, I'd like for you to reinstall iOS. The section titled "Put your device in recovery mode and set it up again" will walk you through all the steps to reinstall iOS software on your device. 

Let me know how that goes, and take care!

I having issue which whenever i activated my mobile network or wifi, it didnt show on home screen. Only showed little plane on top left of home screen but the display was normal when i opened any other app. Mine was iphone 7plus ios 13.3

How i fixed: Screenrecording when on home screen and the display back to normal after that

Hope it will help

If Airplane Mode is turned on for longer than about 45 mins, the Airplane icon won't go away.

Here are three ways to fix it:

1. Restart the device
2. Soft reset the device
3. Start Screen Recording for a few seconds and turn it off. When you start Screen Recording with Airplane Mode turned OFF, you will see the cellular signal strength, service provider name and Wi-Fi signal return.

Apple needs to fix this.

iOS 13.5.1 -- iPhone 6s / iPhone 7

Three ways to temporarily fix this:

1. With airplane mode OFF, if you still see the airplane mode icon in some apps, start Screen Recording. When you start Screen Recording, you will see the cellular signal bars, service provider name and Wi-Fi signal (if you're near a known Wi-Fi network) return. Then turn Screen Recording off.

2. Restart iPhone.

3. Soft reset iPhone.

I have had a similar problem. Using an iPhone 8 Plus and on all iOS 13.1.x and 13.2.x versions. The airplane mode symbol appears in the top left of the screen no matter what combination of settings I have: cellular on, WiFi off; cellular off, WiFi on; Cellular on, WiFi on. This does not happen on my older iPhone 6S. However, now that I've upgraded to iOS 13.3 and rebooted, the problem seems to have disappeared.

FYI - for me the issue was resolved after my carrier pushed a carrier update. I doubt that helps, since I'm not sure you can force a carrier update.

Had this issue too after updating to iOS 13 (13.2 when I updated from 12). Have since restored my phone (DFU) with a fresh install/update to 13.4, issue still happening. I didn’t restore from a backup either.

So, in summary, even with a completely fresh install of iOS 13.4 (latest version at time of writing) and setup as new phone, no change. This is obviously an issue with the OS.

osxHarry is right. The problem does not surface right after a restart (or a soft reset), but if Airplane Mode is turned on for longer than about 45 mins, the Airplane icon won't go away no matter what you do -- unless you restart or soft reset the device.

iOS 13.5 -- iPhone 6s

I spoke too soon. I just noticed that my iPhone 8 Plus (on iOS 13.3) home screen has the following symbols in the top left of the screen: airplane mode icon followed by "AT&T WiFi" with no WiFi strength indicators visible. No Bluetooth symbol is visible. However, in settings, my phone is NOT in airplane mode, cellular data IS turned on, WiFi is on and connected, and Bluetooth is on.

Something is clearly wrong with all versions of iOS 13 to date. They all have demonstrated this problem where the airplane mode, Wifi mode icons are shown/not shown without rhyme or reason. I suspect that the cause of this is a bug that is manifest in iPhones that don't have the 'camera notch' in the screen. Due to the notch in iPhone X and above, there is less room on 'notched' phones to display all the status icons than on the older 'notchless' iPhone 8, 7, 6S, etc. Some 'notch' code is kicking in unnecessarily on 'notchless' phones to hide icons and/or display them incorrectly.

I have this same problem. It shows it's in airplane mode when it's not. I can open and close a folder on the home screen and it briefly flashes the carrier without the airplane icon, then goes back to showing the airplane icon. A similar problem occurs when the phone is in airplane mode and connected to wifi. It shows the airplane icon (correctly this time) but does not show the wifi icon. If I open and close a folder, it briefly flashes the wifi icon.

When I restart the phone, it works correctly for a day or so.

I regularly keep the phone in airplane mode, since I'm nearly always around wifi. I only turn off airplane mode when I'm out and about, and need to use data.

This happened on my iPhone 8 and now my 11, must be an iOS bug which hasn’t been fixed yet as I find it hard to believe that my last two phones have had the same problem...it happens after having flight mode on for a long period of time, then when I turn it off the flight mode symbol remains despite me having cellular data etc

It is not in airplane mode, it just shows the icon when in certain apps, like mail. I checked, Can still receive calls even though icon shows. iPhone 8, iOS 13.3, mail app and others.

At least it doesn't happen for a while after restarting the phone.

But I'm not sure yet what triggers it to happen again.

Hi Apple,

This is just a weird bug! If anything, it just tells us how deteriorating the QC of Apple’s software it has come to, why such a simple UI bug still exists? And it’s not something that is hidden in a far to reach screen, it’s on every one of them.

I could swear that at one point I had different apps retain different modes, so it isn’t always 2!

The problem again in case you missed it, if you put the phone on airplane mode and use the phone for a while, then when you change the network back to normal, some apps still show the historical image of the airplane mode, or even a completely older mode! It’s of course misleading.

The other related problem unfortunately happens on the main screen itself, where supposedly it’s the most refreshed, it’s not! The problem is the Wifi icon disappears when in reality it’s connected to Wifi, I could tel because I would be already connected to the internet while my Data is turned off, so where did the wifi icon go?

There was no reason whatsoever for your developers to touch that part of the iOS code, it was working just fine!

Thanks!

Apple began seeding the golden master of iOS 13.6 beta 4 (17G68) a few hours ago. Under "bug fixes and other improvements" Apple includes a couple of fixes for Wi-Fi Calling, but I do not see the fix for Airplane Mode issues listed in this thread.

We will have to wait and see if it's a fix Apple has slipped into iOS 13.6 without listing it. Fingers crossed -- if not, maybe Apple will sort it out in iOS 14 in the fall.

In case anyone is interested, here are the release notes for iOS 13.6: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/apple-releases-ios-13-6-gm-for-public-beta-testers-includes-carkey-support-apple-news-audio-symptom-tracker-0322611/