Missing phone icon

Question

Missing phone icon

Hi all,

I have a friend who is elderly and has some memory issues.

He has an 11 Pro Max 512GB. It is running 13.3.

He is often bewildered by the capabilities on the iPhone and has managed to achieve some remarkable SNAFUs. So tonight, when he called me from his backup Android phone to tell me that the phone icon had vanished from his task bar.

I spent an hour trying to explain that the phone icon is unable to be deleted and we confirmed this by seeing the app under Siri recommendations and by typing “phone” in the search bar.

He was still very agitated so I went to his house fully prepared to find the missing icon on a page of apps.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find that when I pressed the gap where the phone icon had been, it immediately re-appeared then vanished again. The phone app worked. After repeating this a few times, the phone icon appeared and did not dissapear again.

My friend is now convinced he has a dud phone.

Anyone help, please?

Thanks.

Eddie

Posted on Dec 18, 2019 3:14 PM

Reply

Answer 1

rose_10

Community Specialist

Dec 21, 2019 10:21 AM in response to Eddie in Prestwick

Hey Eddie in Prestwick,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities! I understand there was an issue with the Phone app/icon missing.

I definitely want you, and your friend to be sure that his iPhone is going to continue working as expected. While it's tough to speculate on what happened, I am happy to hear it's resolved. One option to help prevent any other unexpected behavior may be to use some screen time restrictions. This can be used to prevent him from being able to make any changes to his device, but not limit the use if he doesn't want that.

Check that out here: Use Screen Time on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Of course, if the issue with the icons or apps arises again, we'll be here to help.

Thanks again, and have a great day!

Reply

Answer 2

Dec 21, 2019 11:52 AM in response to rose_10

Thanks for the reply.

I suspected it was operator-induced but when I pressed the space on the task bar where the phone icon resides, it magically appeared then disappeared when I let go. I did this several times to ensure it wasn’t a one-off. Finally it stayed on the task bar.

Eddie

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Missing phone icon

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