A little-known iPhone feature helped rescue a lost hiker in California

A lost hiker used iPhone’s emergency SOS feature to escape a forest at night. Courtesy of Apple

• A niche iPhone feature helped a search-and-rescue team find a lost hiker in California, KTLA said.
• The hiker used the Emergency SOS feature on his iPhone 14 to alert authorities. 
• The Apple feature uses satellite to locate those in places where there’s no phone service or Wi-Fi.

If you ever find yourself lost in the wilderness, a little-known iPhone feature may help you get back to safety.

On Sunday night, a lost hiker who took a wrong turn in the Angeles National Forest in southern California was rescued after he activated the Emergency SOS feature on his iPhone 14, KTLA reported.

Available on the iPhone 14 and later models, the emergency feature uses satellite to identify where a respondent is located without the need for cellular data or WiFi, according to Apple. It’s similar to the GPS tracking technology used in the Find My Friends app.

iPhone users can activate the feature by pressing down the lock button on the side and one of the volume buttons simultaneously until the Emergency SOS slider pops up.

Thanks to the emergency feature, a local volunteer rescue team got the hiker’s alert around 8 p.m. In response, search-and-rescue first responder volunteer Mike Leum, plus a trainee, went to the forest to search for him, KTLA reported. According to the outlet, they told the hiker to stay put by communicating with him through satellite text messages.

It took the rescue team about an hour and a half to find the hiker, KTLA said. Once located, they spent an additional two hours hiking — at times with water up to their knees — to get him out of the forest.

“Another iPhone 14 save!” Leum wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, about the rescue mission.

“Lost hiker in the Angeles National Forest used the SOS/911 feature,” the first responder continued. “We found him quickly and got him out safe.”

Leum and Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider before publication.

It’s not the first time rescue teams have located lost hikers through the iPhone’s emergency feature in California, KTLA reported. And in December 2022, a man in Alaska alerted emergency responders using the SOS feature after he was stranded traveling on a snow machine.

The iPhone’s emergency SOS feature isn’t the only one that can alert authorities to life-threatening situations. In October 2022, Apple’s crash-detection feature, found in the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Series 8, notified police officers of a fatal car crash in Lincoln, Nebraska, that left six people dead.

Still, Apple’s safety features aren’t perfect. Last January, police raided a gym in Australia after Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, called emergency services when it mistakenly heard a Muay Thai fighter and boxing instructor say the numerical code that automatically contacts authorities during a training session. Police involved in the incident said they heard that shots were fired when that didn’t happen.

That same month, Apple reportedly talked to emergency call centers after numerous reports of skiers’ iPhones and Apple Watches falsely triggering 911 calls because of the crash-detection feature.