What to Do When Your iPhone or iPad Won’t Turn On

iPhones and iPads are supposed to “Just work,” but no technology is perfect. If you’ve pressed the Power button and the screen won’t turn on or you see an error message, don’t worry. You can probably make it boot again.
The instructions here will make any iPhone or iPad boot up and work properly. If they don’t, your device has a hardware problem preventing it from booting.

Plug It In, Let It Charge — And Wait

An iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch may fail to turn on if its battery is completely dead. Generally, you’ll see some sort of “low battery” indicator when you try to turn an iOS device on and it doesn’t have enough battery power. But, when the battery is completely dead, it won’t respond and you’ll just see the black screen.
Connect your iPhone or iPad to a wall charger and let it charge for a little while — give it fifteen minutes, perhaps. If the battery is completely dead, you can’t just plug it in and expect it to respond immediately. Give it a few minutes to charge and it should turn itself on. This will fix your device if its battery was just completely drained.
Make sure your charger is working if this doesn’t work. A broken charger or charging cable may prevent it from charging. Try another charger and cable if you have them available.

Hold Power + Home to Perform a Hard Reset

iPhones and iPads can freeze completely, just like other computers. If they do, the Power and Home buttons will do nothing. Perform a “hard reset” to fix this. This was traditionally performed by removing a device’s battery and reinserting it or pulling the power cable on devices without batteries, which is why it’s also known as performing a “power cycle.” However, iPhones and iPads don’t have a removable battery. Instead, there’s a button combination you can use to forcibly restart your phone or tablet.
To do this, press both the Power and Home buttons and hold them down. Keep holding both buttons down until you see the Apple logo appear on the screen. The logo should appear between ten and twenty seconds after you start holding the buttons. After the Apple logo appears, your iPhone or iPad will boot back up normally. (The Power button is also known as the Sleep/Wake button — it’s the button that normally turns your device’s screen on and off.)
If this button combination doesn’t work, your iPhone or iPad may need to be charged for a while first. Charge it for a while before attempting the Power+Home button hard reset.