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My iPhone X Keeps Restarting! Here’s The Real Fix.

    David Payette
  • 6 years ago
    • Categories: Power

Your iPhone X keeps restarting and you don’t know what to do. It’s a brand new phone, and it’s stuck in a restart loop. You see the black screen with the wheel in the middle, but as soon as your iPhone X turns on, it turns back off after about 30 seconds. In this article, I’ll explain why your iPhone X keeps restarting and how to stop the iPhone X restart loop for good.

iPhone X Keeps Restarting: Here’s The Fix!

Your iPhone X keeps restarting because of a software problem. Many users have reported that the problem stems from a “date bug” that occurred December 2, 2017. As good as the iPhone operating system is, it’s not perfect. Who knew the clock would be its achilles heel?

I decided to write this article after a friend messaged me asking for help. His iPhone X began restarting after he plugged into his headphones. This problem isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.

If you’re seeing the black screen with the white wheel in the middle of your iPhone X, or if your iPhone X just keeps restarting, you’re in the right place. We’ll start with the simplest fixes and get more complicated as we go.

How Do I Stop My iPhone X From Restarting?

1. Try A Hard Reset

A hard reset is the simplest fix we’ll cover in this article. Even though it won’t work for most people, it’s the first thing Apple techs try at the Genius Bar. Here’s how to hard reset your iPhone X:

  1. Quickly press and release the volume up button.
  2. Quickly press and release the volume down button.
  3. Press and hold the side button until the Apple logo reappears on the screen, and then let go.

Here’s what to watch out for: Most people who have trouble hard resetting their iPhone X are doing everything right except for one thing: They don’t hold the side button down for long enough. 

Make sure that when you hard reset your iPhone, you hold the side button down for 20 seconds — probably a lot longer than you think you should. If a hard reset didn’t work for you, it’s time to move onto the next step.

2. Quickly Turn Off A Setting In Notifications

The next fix for this problem, and one that will work for a lot of people, is to change a setting in the Settings app. It’s tricky, though — many people will only have about 30 seconds before their iPhone restarts again! If at first you don’t succeed…

  1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone X
  2. Tap Notifications
  3. Tap Show Previews
  4. Tap Never

After you change the setting, try hard resetting your iPhone again. If it stops restarting, great. If not, continue to the next step.

3. Manually Change The Date To December 1, 2017

A quick fix for the “date bug” is to send your iPhone back in time — all the way to December 1, 2017. Go to Settings -> General -> Date & Time and tap the green switch on the right of Set Automatically to turn it off.

When you turn off Set Automatically, the current date on the iPhone appears in blue at the bottom of the menu. Tap on the date to open the date slider and use your finger to adjust the slider to Fri Dec 1. To finish up, tap < General in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

4. Check For An iPhone Software Update

Apple releases bugs for software issues all the time, and this problem may have been resolved by the time you read this article! To check for a software update, go to Settings -> General -> Software Update. If an update is avialable, you’ll be given the option to download and install it.

The problem with this approach is that if your iPhone keeps restarting, you won’t have enough time to download and install the update before it restarts again. In that case, it’s time to plug your iPhone into your computer and do a manual restore: That’s what we’ll cover in the next step.

5. Put Your iPhone X Into Recovery Mode And Restore

Recovery mode is a special, “deeper” kind of restore that erases everything on your iPhone and gives it a fresh start by reinstalling iOS from scratch. It resolves almost every software problem, but it’s not ideal.

Restoring your iPhone and setting it up again is easy if your have an iCloud or iTunes backup. After your iPhone restores, you’ll be able to sign in with your Apple ID, restore from your backup, and you’ll be right back where you left off.

If you don’t have a backup, however, you could end up losing pictures, text messages, and everything else that’s on your iPhone. It might be worth a trip to the Apple Store if you don’t want to lose your photos — but there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to fix it either. Sometimes a Recovery Mode Restore is a necessity.

You’ll need access to a Mac or PC to restore your iPhone X. It doesn’t have to be your Mac or PC — we’re just using iTunes as a tool to load new software onto your iPhone. Here’s how to put your iPhone X into recovery mode and restore.

  1. Close iTunes on your Mac or PC if it’s open.
  2. Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC using the Lightning (USB charger) cable.
  3. Open iTunes.
  4. Quickly press and release the volume up button.
  5. Quickly press and release the volume down button.
  6. Press and hold the side button until a message appears in iTunes that says an iPhone has been detected in recovery mode.
  7. Follow the instructions in iTunes to restore your iPhone.

If you have an iCloud backup, a friend’s computer, or you don’t have an iCloud backup, you can disconnect your iPhone from your computer after the restore finishes and your iTunes says “Welcome to your new iPhone”. Be careful not to disconnect your iPhone before you see that message, or things can go wrong.

If you’re still having a problem with your iPhone, check out my original article called Why Does My iPhone Keep Restarting? for a comprehensive walkthrough of how to fix this problem for every iPhone.

iPhone X: Not Restarting Any More!

Now that your iPhone X has stopped restarting, you can get back to enjoying all it has to offer. If this article helped you out, share it with your friends! If you have any other questions, leave a comment down below and I’ll help you as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading and all the best,
David P.

View Comments (63)

  • Mine is still doing it and I don’t know why I did everything but I’m still not sure why it keeps doing this

  • Hey. My Xs kept on restarting every 2-3 minutes when charging or not used but when I’m using it, it works fine. I now turn off my phone whenever I’m charging it but it’s still a hassle. I tried all the steps but still didn’t work. Can someone help me? :(

  • whenever I plug in my headphones, my Xs restarts continuously. When I remove it, it shuts down and works normally. As soon as the screen locks and goes off. It also restarts continuously. Can anyone help me please.

  • My iPhone X is repeatedly restarting, and I only have enough time in between restarts to unlock my phone. After that whenever I try to follow these steps it seems to crash and restart my phone, not allowing me to do anything to troubleshoot. I cannot even factory reset my phone because halfway through it just crashes and restarts the reset process.

    • Took me 6 hours but I solved this. Plug the phone into a charger. Follow the hard reset procedure (quick press and release of vol up, vol down, then side button and hold side button until the apple icon appears then keep holding till the recovery mode appears). Then, you need to install itunes on a windows PC unless you have it already. Then plug the phone into the laptop via usb. The itunes software should recognise the iphone needs to be restored and reset. Go for full restore and reset (don't bother with reset only). Once the phone has been reset, DO NOT allow it to restore a backup from the icloud, or indeed I found i needed to avoid any automated steps such as allowing it to be placed near another of your apple devices to gain the apple ID etc. Set the newly restored phone up entirely manually. This is laborious and does mean you need to reinstall all apps and set your email/apple pay etc. up again from scratch. However it works. emails will resynch once you set your account up but you'll loose texts and files etc. etc. and pictures. Up to you if you wish to try selectively restoring these from your icloud backup. I have not. Phone however is saved and although like starting over is at least working as new and i've resinstalled all valuable apps for me and the data in them reappeared anyhow, Hope helpful.

  • Hi..
    i was having the same problem with my XS max. I found your article and tried the hard reset and recovery. It did not work. I also tried the changing of date to 1december 2017. It did not work, 😅.
    However, it gave me an idea to try to disable the set automatically n i set today’s date manually. It worked!!
    Now my iphone does not restart itself, it can use face id and it also did not prompt notifications for WhatsApp setting any longer.
    Thank you very much.

    • This is an update:
      The method earlier only worked temporarily.

      After having the same issues over and over, i did the complete reset, it did not work as well. However, it helped me to identify apps that were no longer in App Store. I deleted those and i found a few more that were no longer in app store. I also grouped the similar-seldom-used-apps into folders.

      Now the problem is bearable and intermittent, occurring once in a few weeks. Everytime the problem occurs, when my iphone restarts, i’ll turn the setting to never lock, and i’ll turn off the phone whenever I don’t use it for a few hours. Miraculously, this method works. When the phone is no longer restarts, i turned it back to auto-lock (1 min normally).

      I have tried sending the iphone to the service centre before. However, they said it’s unrepairable because it has motherboard problem.. They asked me to buy a new iphone instead. Hmm..

      It’s so wasteful to buy a new iphone when there is no apparent problem with my iphone. Now, the problem has rarely occurred. I wonder if the small folders actually helped reducing the problems.

      I noticed that nowadays the problem occurred when i overused the iphone. Perhaps it’s true when they say it’s a motherboard problem. Since it’s rarely occurred nowadays, I’m still hanging onto the iphone..

  • My iPhone XS was running iOS 15.2 but it would stop and start in the middle of calls, inside apps and when reviewing email. I changed the notification preview parm and it seems to have helped.

  • My iPhone XS Max just got fixed by these steps. My iPhone was restarting continuously when idle, now it stopped. Still, when my dongle is connected to my phone it gets switched off at the exact moment. I hope you would help me.

  • I have tried all the above methods and none have prevailed successful, I am seriously beginning to want to switch over to Android lol. When I attempt anything through iTunes, it always gives the same error message 4013, regardless of what computer I use or cable. Hard reset doesn't work for me. As for the others, I can't even get my phone to fully start up to make the setting changes.

  • My iphone x keeps restarting even after doing the steps close to 50 times and it still cant be fixed after using the steps above.

  • Helped me fix my problem better than other sites since my attempts at hard rebooting and using itunes to restart were not working - I hoped if I looked long enough, I'd find some new info that would work - and what to do as soon as you get your phone to reboot properly was helpful too! I'm updating the software right now. Thank you! Thought problem might have coincided with falling in water earlier in the day - but I think the phone is supposed to be water resistant so I hadn't been worried... plus had just backed up all photos. :)

  • if you look at the system history, you will see panic-2020 - this means phone shut down for heat, the sensor is flawed in some iphone models and sends out the wrong signal, like the phone has the electronic version of fibromyalgia. needs to be fixed, apple doesn't stand by their products after they are a couple of years old unfortunately.

    • this might be whats happening to my iPhone XS, I don't know though. I just got it fixed and iy did the same thing again

  • Hi David
    i did all of The above and my iPhone cs keeps restarting. When I put it dfx mode the I can’t update fast enough before it restart again. I’ve updated to the 13.6...
    I need you help

  • my iphone xs keeps restarting. the apple logo pops up and the screen goes black over and over.

    • I bought mine recently and it does the same problem.imagine I ordered it all the way from dubai ?

  • Hmmm, idk why but every time my phone die completely, and I go to plug it in and it just acts stupid, as soon as it turns on, it acts slow for bout 10 seconds and then turns strait back off

  • Hi! I did the changing the date step and it did stop my iphone from restarting every few seconds however most of my apps that require the internet can't be used because of the incorrect time. I'm trying to update my software but it says that there's an error. So itried updating through my itunes (my pc isn
    t apple it's hp) and i have downloaded it already now that i'm trying to update the downloaded software onto my iphone it keeps on saying there is an error. I don't know what bto do. It has stopped restarting but now I can't use it. Any suggestions? Thank you so much!

  • I realize this article is a year old but this just happened to me and I am desperate for any help anyone can give me. I'm scared I have just lost everything, over 7,000 pictures and videos and kids, grandkids, pictures of my dad who passed away last year, AND SO MUCH MORE. I woke up this morning and my phone that I just recently bought was at the factory setup screen asking me to pick my language just like it is when the phone is brand new. I have not done anything with it yet, I have not backed it up yet to my iTunes. I do not use iCloud so my stuff is not on there. The reason I bought this phone is because my old phone did the exact same thing and after taking it to a couple of places, (Geek Squad) because it had not been updated and wouldn't get past a certain part of the setup process I bought this phone and saved my old one hoping someone could one day help me get everything off of it. I also have an iPad which a lot of my stuff was on but not all of it, so when I bought the X I used airdrop and sent as much as I could from my iPad to the new X. Now, this happens with the X this morning, so let me say what happened with my iPad yesterday. I was reading a book on my iPad yesterday and stopped, set my iPad on the bed for a couple of hours then pick it up to use it again and it has done the exact same thing, completely reset to the factory setup screen just like it was brand new being setup for the first time. When that happened yesterday I was livid but thought ok I've got everything on my phone I'll get it back to my iPad tomorrow. Well tomorrow is today and I wake up with my phone having done this and have lost everything in both devices. Does anyone have any ideas or know anyone that can tell me if it's possible my pictures and messages, all my stuff is still on either one of my devices. I am not going to setup my X yet to use it until I try and figure something out because I'm afraid if I do I will not be able to salvage anything if it's still there. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  • Doesn't work for me. My iPhone X is in bootloop and dont power on, so I cant change the date. I tried to updape with iTunes but appears the 4013 error. I have alrealdy made everything possible to solve 4013 error, but this also not work.

  • thanks for this. this really worked. My iphone X was shutting down and heating up like it was going to burn to death. Changing the date fixed it, however, i cannot seem to put that date back to auto again. when i do, the shutdown/burnup problem comes back. I will leave the date as 1 Dec until tomorrow and see if i can then re set it to auto. If anyone has a solution though, please let me know! Thanks David!!

  • The date worked, Had to do it twice to make it 'stick'. After update the face ID stopped working. Thanks Apple!!

  • Thank you so much for your kindness of sharing the info, really needed it!!! But after have done that, I downloaded the newer version of iOS, everthing is back to normal, the date changed back automatically, but the facial recognition is gone, so now hoping that Apple will fix it soon. Again, thank you so much for sharing.

  • Thanks for the help, David! Changing the date, and then updating the software (of which I had no idea was available) seems to have worked for me.

  • It really worked for me. Thank you very much for posting such a really very useful and helpful article like this one. You can help a lot of people, not just only the ones who commented and gave Thank you to you here. ^^

  • t really worked for me. Thank you very much for posting such a really very useful and helpful article like this one. You can help a lot of people, not just only the ones who commented and gave Thank you to you here. ^^

  • It really worked for me. Thank you very much for posting such a really very useful and helpful like this one. You can help a lot of people, not just only the ones who commented and gave Thank you to you here.

  • The date change fix worked. Thank you so much. I tho8my phone is dead or something but didn't know it happened with lot of people.

  • OMG! not just Iphone X, I have an 8 plus and it started this in the middle of the night. I unplugged it as it kept beeping. And woke up with a dead phone. It has been restarting all morning, I haven't been able to use any apps or do an update. I tried your steps and changed the date and finally the update went through.
    Thank You

  • Hi David, thanks for posting this article! It really helped me out. My phone stopped restarting after change the date. Just wondering can I turn the date back to normal? It's kind of weird always have the date on 1st Dec.

  • If you're able to update to iOS 11.2, then it's probably safe to change it back. And, if it does start to happen again, now you know what to do!

  • I'm looking for this problem too. We have to keep the date to 1 dec 2017 forever? I have IOS 11.2.2 already.

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David Payette: I'm a former Apple employee and the founder of Payette Forward, and I'm here to help you with your iPhone.