What is the Little Phone Symbol on iPhone?

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If you’ve been noticing the status bar a the top of your screen, then you have probably noticed a bunch of interesting ones.

Some of these are easy to identify, while others might be a bit more difficult. You might be wondering about the little phone symbol on iPhone if you see that one at the top of your iPhone screen and are having trouble trying to figure out what it means, or how to get rid of it.

The phone symbol that appears on your iPhone at the top of the screen indicates that a feature called TTY is enabled on the device. Use these steps to add or remove the phone symbol on an iPhone.

Contents hide
1 How to Remove the Phone Symbol on an iPhone
2 How to Turn On or Turn Off TTY on an iPhone (Guide with Pictures)
3 More Information on the Phone Symbol in the iPhone Status Bar
4 Additional Reading

How to Remove the Phone Symbol on an iPhone

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Choose the Accessibility option.
  3. Scroll down and select the RTT option.
  4. Enable or disable the options on this menu as needed.

Our article continues below with additional information about how to get rid of the little phone symbol on iPhone, including pictures for each of these steps.

The status bar at the top of your iPhone screen can display a number of different icons.

Some of these icons are easy to decipher, and have obvious connotations. But others can be a little more difficult to identify, especially if they have just appeared.

One such symbol that you might see on your iPhone looks like a phone. Specifically, it looks like a phone handset with a few squares beneath it.

This symbol means that TTY is enabled on the device. This is a feature that helps individuals who are hard of hearing to make phone calls.

Our guide below will show you how to enable or disable TTY on an iPhone.

How to Turn On or Turn Off TTY on an iPhone (Guide with Pictures)

The steps in this article were performed on an iPhone 11 in iOS 13.6.1. Note that newer iPhone models with the notch at the top of the screen may not display the TTY phone symbol even when it’s activated.

Step 1: Open the Settings app.

open Settings

Step 2: Select the Accessibility option.

open Accessibility

Step 3: Scroll down and touch the RTT option.

select the RTT option

Step 4: Tap the button next to each option that you would like to enable or disable.

how to remove little phone symbol on iPhone

Now that you know how to remove the little phone symbol on iPhone you will be able to come back here in the future if you need to use the TTY feature, or if it pops up again and you need to turn it off.

More Information on the Phone Symbol in the iPhone Status Bar

There are a lot of other iPhone icons that you might see in the status bar at the top of your screen. There are things to let you know about Portrait Orientation Lock, or you might see Bluetooth icons if you are using AirPods or another type of Bluetooth headphone.

Most of these icons will appear at the top of the iPhone Home screen, or when you are using other apps on your Apple iPhone or other iOS device.

If you open the Control Center by either swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen on newer iPhone models, or by swiping up from the bottom of the screen on iPhone models with a Home button, then you see an entire other set of control center icons.

You don’t need to know what every iPhone icon means, but some iPhone symbols are good to recognize.

For example, all the icons in the top-left card of the Control center are for various types of network connections. You can enter or exit airplane mode if you tap the airplane icon, or you can tap and hold on the card to see other options like Airdrop, or the Personal Hotspot button.

Additional Reading