What Does the Moon Icon on the iPhone Mean?

We often get questions from readers asking what certain icons on phones mean so today I’m going to list all of the icons on the iPhone to help answer some of them. One icon seems to be more mysterious than the others, the moon icon on the iPhone. So what does it mean and what do the other icons signify?

Icons are a great way to communicate with the user without using up too much space. Like emoji, once you know what each icon represents, your understanding of what’s going on with your phone increases exponentially. So let’s see what all of those iPhone icons mean. As we receive more questions about the moon icon than any other, let’s begin with that.

The moon icon on the iPhone

There are two moon icons in use within iOS. The first is on the home screen and the other is within iMessage. The moon icon on the home screen will appear by the battery charge indicator in the top right of your iPhone screen. It’s a crescent moon and indicates you have Do Not Disturb activated.

The crescent moon in iMessage means you have muted a particular contact so you don’t see notifications from them. You will see a blue moon when you have a new message which will turn gray once you have read it.

Other iPhone icons

iOS is full of icons. Some make perfect sense while others take a little working out. You will typically see the following icons in the top left or right of your screen depending on what version of iPhone you have.

• The bars icon refers to signal strength. The more bars, the stronger the signal.
• The bars that look like exclamation marks means the same for dual SIM iPhones.
• LTE means you’re within range of your network’s LTE signal.
• 5G means your network’s 5G network is within range and you can use it.
• 3G means the same for the 3G network, as does the 4G icon.
• GPRS means you’re in range of your network’s GPRS range.
• The E icon means you only have access to EDGE networks, (GSM).
• Wi-Fi and the WiFi icon mean you’re within range of a connected wireless network. Wi-Fi specifically means you can use WiFi calling if you want to.
• The VPN icon means you’re connected to the internet using a VPN on the iPhone.
• The small black arrow app means an app is using location services. A hollow arrow means the app may request location data if it needs it.
• The progress circle icon means you’re waiting for something to happen from the network.
• The phone icon with the arrow means you have call forwarding enabled.
• The airplane icon means Airplane Mode is active.
• The phone over a keyboard icon means you have Teletype activated.
• The padlock in a circle means screen rotation is turned off.
• The sync circle icon means your iPhone is syncing with iTunes.
• The black padlock means your iPhone is locked.
• The headphones icon means your iPhone is paired with wireless headphones or earbuds.
• The alarm clock icon means you have an alarm set.
• The horizontal green battery icon means your iPhone is charging.
• The horizontal battery icon is your charge indicator and means you’re in low power mode.
• The vertical battery indicator shows the levels of a paired Bluetooth accessory.
• The intertwined rings icon means you’re using a Personal Hotspot.
• The play arrow in a circle means your iPhone is connected to Apple CarPlay.
• The blue oval around the time means you’re using a Personal Hotspot or Screen Mirroring.
• The red oval around the time means you’re recording sound or screen recording.
• The green oval behind the time means you’re still on a call.

As you can see, there are a lot of icons to get to grips with but they are all logical and the majority of them are intuitive once you can work out what each means.

You will also see some icons in Control Center.

• The blue circle with the radio inside is for AirDrop.
• The blue circle with the Bluetooth icon is for Bluetooth.
• The green circle with the transmitter icon is for Cellular Data.
• The green circle with the intertwined rings is a Hotspot.

That’s pretty much it for the standard iPhone icons. Short, sweet and to the point. I’m sure these will change as future versions of iOS updates them but these are current in the iPhone X and iOS 12.

Did I miss any iPhone icons? Know of any plans to change these in iOS 13? Tell us below if you have anything to add!

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