How to Reject a Call from Your iPhone Lock Screen

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Many an iPhone owner has a love/hate relationship with their iPhone. In large part this is because generally the iPhone is a masterful device, which ‘just works’ in so many ways, and has so many cool features, that it’s searingly frustrating when something that should be simple – should be so obvious – isn’t. Take, for example, rejecting an incoming call from the iPhone’s lock screen. Just how do you decline a call from the iPhone lock screen? Here’s how.

When you have your iPhone locked, or when it locks automatically after a certain period, and you then receive an incoming call, the phone wakes up with the lock screen, on which the only option is “slide to answer” (i.e. to answer the call). Often you may want to reject the call (say, when you are in a meeting, and you don’t want to take the call, but you also don’t want to have your phone keep ringing until it goes to voicemail). If the only option is to “slide to answer” then it seems that you are stuck either answering the phone, or having it ring until it goes to voicemail.

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Now, don’t you think that there should be a “reject” or “decline” option on that screen? There is certainly such an option on an Android phone (there’s also an “always reject this number” option on an Android phone, which is pretty darned sweet).

This is all the more frustrating because when your iPhone is not locked, and you get an incoming call, there is an option to decline it:

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Now, the reality is that there is a way to reject an incoming call (which will send it to voicemail) from your iPhone’s lock screen. It is just completely not obvious.

The way to reject a call from your iPhone’s lock screen is to quickly push the “Sleep / Awake” button on the top of your iPhone twice. The Sleep/Awake button is the oval button on the top of your iPhone:

 

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And that’s all you have to do to reject a call from the lock screen of your iPhone. Pretty simple, once you know how, that is.

By the way, pushing the Sleep / Awake button just once will mute the ringing (but not decline the call).

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