Stopping iPod playback on iPhone

Last updated: May 16, 2021 5:01 pm UTC

By Jesse Hollington - Senior Editor

Q: How do you turn off the iPod on the iPhone. There is a stop button to pause play.

However, I do not see a button to stop playback.

– Anonymous

A: With a solid-state device, there is absolutely no practical difference between a PAUSE button and a STOP button, which is why the iPod and iPhone do not include a STOP button.

The concept of a STOP button is a hold-over from the days of mechanical devices such as cassette players. On the iPhone, simply pausing iPod playback and exiting to the Home screen or pressing the Sleep/Wake button effectively turns off the iPod.

By Jesse Hollington Senior Editor

Jesse Hollington was a Senior Editor at iLounge. He's written about Apple technology for nearly a decade and had been covering the industry since the early days of iLounge. In his role at iLounge, he provided daily news coverage, wrote and edited features and reviews, and was responsible for the overall quality of the site's content.