My iPod won't shut off. Holding down the Play button does nothing. It just won't turn off. A quick Google reveals that this isn't exactly a new thing, and comes up with several articles that explain how to fix it: reboot the thing.
How do you reboot an iPod? Well, Apple has the answer. Toggle the Hold switch to Hold and then back off again, and then hold down Menu and Select (the center button) for six to ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears. The Apple logo displays while the iPod is booting.
That fixed it. Yay.
You can tell if your iPod won't turn off (beyond the obvious "why the frak won't holding Play shut it off?!") when it remains at the menu after being docked with iTunes - assuming Disk Mode isn't active.
Update: Making sure to remove the headphones before rebooting it. There may be a really loud "snapping" sound as it reboots. Ow.
Update 2009-11-12: Should it ever come up, you can reboot the iPhone/iPod Touch by pressing and holding the Home and Lock buttons for 5-10 seconds. I haven't had these refuse to shut off (mainly because they never shut off, instead they suspend) but I have managed to crash my iPhone.
Thanks
Hey, just wanted to say, thank you so much!! If my ipod was screwed up id literally kill myself. lol basically, thanks a lot
Ipod
ok... i dont have a problem as drastic but sometimes when i try to turn off ipod.... it takes sereral minutes of holding down the play button the letting go and retrying before it finaly turns off..
wondering if there is any way to fix this... yes i have rebooted it before (center button + menu button) thx
Try pressing the menu button
I've found that pressing the Menu button and waiting for the menu to show up often fixes whatever it is that's causing the iPod to refuse to shut off. It appears that it gets into a state where it just ignores all non-playback related commands.
Pressing the Menu button and then waiting for several seconds until the menu comes up allows the iPod to be shut off by pressing Play like it should.
Note this appears to be unrelated to another problem wherein it simply never goes to sleep, even while docked. (In other words, it'll never move to the "Charging/Charged" screen.)
Thank you so much!!
I just wanted to say I tried the rebooting thing, but it didn't work for mine. However, when I saw about pressing the menu button I tried that and it worked. I have to play a song, then press the menu button until it goes back to the main screen and then press and hold play to turn it off. I have to be quick and put it on hold immediately after because it doesn't stay off otherwise, but at least it's turned off now. Thank you SO much!!! I thought I was screwed. lol
It worked!
Thanks so much. None of the other tips worked, but yours did. I set a song playing and held MENU until it did the full skip back to the top menu. Then holding play/pause shut it off!
Yay! It finally is sleeping.
Holding the MENU button was the key for mine. I tried every other tip and nothing would put it to sleep. Thank you so much!!!
My Ipod won't turn off
Thank you SO much !!! - you don't know how long I have battled with this and your solution resolved the problem in seconds. I owe you big time :-))
Re: Ipod advice
Thank you so much!!!
Thanks for posting this advice
Apple should be paying you a commission!
Many thanks.
ipod won't shut off
Ipod wouldn't shut off. Now the battery is way dead. All that shows is the apple logo, but it goes off & on. I've tried the other suggestions here but none of them work. I've had it almost a year & this just happened 3 days ago.
reboot Question
will toggleing the hold switch and pressing the buttons to reboot my ipod delete my songs?
IPOD wayyy dead
Your ipod is just totally drained of battery life, just put it on ur ipod dock or other charger and let it sit for 24 hours.. it happened to me too, i freaked out but my ipod is just fine, ive had it a little over a year.
Thank you, Thank you!!!
You saved the day. . .this is the first time I experienced this problem and I wondered how in the world do I fix this. That's for posting the solution!!!!! :-)
Thanks
I'd also like to thank you - this is the first page that comes up when you type "ipod won't turn off" in Google. ;) I did the reboot trick once, when my iPod wouldn't turn ON, but I didn't think to reboot to make it so I could turn it OFF. Thanks. ;)
~Sparky
Thanks!
Thanks so much! It worked!
ipod won't turn off
could you use ***k instead of the f word - huh???????????
my kid just read this info!!!!!!!!!!!
I could...
It's something I've been meaning to get around to, since the blog post made it to one of the top results on Google.
To be fair, though, when I originally wrote this post, it was after a few hours of searching around to figure out why my iPod wasn't turning off.
Get over it
Lady, your did will come across far worse things than the word "fuck". Get over it and teach him how to cope huh?????
Silly suburban housewives living in their little bubbles.
To that parent..
OMG, if your kid is offended by the word "fuck" and feels the need to come crying to you about it, then he/she should NOT be on the internet. Seriously. The internet holds MUCH worse than a four letter word, trust me. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck!
F**k
Sure. I can use F**k if your kid is stupid enough to not be able to figure it out him/her self. Perhaps you should get some birth control so your next kid won't be an additional burden on society.
what's your problam
Get a life!in staid of saying the f word to be cool
Thank you!!
That worked like a charm. Thanks!
?
learn how to spell before you try to offend people. people do not say "fuck" to try and "be cool." "fuck" can be used in so many ways and it expresses so much more emotion than other words. so please FUCK off because you should respect the FUCK word.
F You
To the stupid parent who asked someone to use F**K instead of Fuck because there kid read the comment above...Shut up. Put a block on your computer. Who the fuck are you to tell someone what to do? Fuck off.
To F You
Loser
Mucho grazie
Cool. after missing out on many hours of airplane time with no ipod because the battery would drain so quickly, finding your post was a great relief. thank you thank you thank you.
You people crack me up
I love how simple people have nothing better to do than attack people who try to have a more wholesome approach to life...how pathetic
People who can't reply to the proper post crack me up
I do love people who can't figure out how to reply to whatever post they were commenting on originally.
Of course to be fair, it may be my fault. The "reply" link on the bottom replies to the post above it. I suppose I should rework the theme to make it clearer which post is which.
It'd also be nice if Drupal allowed me to reparent comments.
But whatever.
Thanks!
Thanks a million man, it worked like a charm. Scared me to death when my iPod froze lol
Ipod
my ipod switches off once i have done this but automatically comes back on. when i am listening to music how do i switch my ipod off normaly and keep it off??
New to me
I haven't had something like that happen to me. You are turning the Hold switch on after you turn it off though, right? Otherwise pressing any button on the face will turn it back on, and it's easy enough to do that accidentally if your iPod is in your pocket.
Ipod refuses to turn ON
My ipod refuses to turn ON!!! I know everyone is saying that their ipod won't shut of but mine doesn't turn on. When I have it on the charger it turns on very slowly but once it gets all of the way on it shuts off quickly. Some times it doesn't even make it that far. HELP!!
To those who love the "F" word
Get a vocabulary.
Worked !
Brilliant. Thanks.
Yay it worked!!
Thanks so much my husband thought he was going to have to deal with Apple support, but you saved us. Thanks a million.
I POD didn't respond
Thank u so much for teaching me how to re boot my ipod!!! I was so annoyed by it. I usuallly just let my ipod run out of charge in hope of it working properly after it was charged again. I usually kept it docked on an alarm radio ipod system and suspected this is what caused the problem. My Ipod would shut off and when I downloaded new playlists it would say do not disconnect after it was already disconnected and updated. I was seriously considering purchasing a new one even though I hadn't given my current one much use. THANK YOU!!!
Um...
It didn't work...
ipod would't turn off
THANK U! IT SO WORKED :)
Ipod not shuting off.
Had troubles in turning off my Ipod. Found your answaer and....
Thanks. Your explanation was somehow clear than the one from Apple. It worked.
Ipod won't turn off
Success, thanks!!!
My Ipod won't turn off
If it doesn't work the first time, try it again. This it what happened to me.
SWEET!!!!
Cheers bro!!!
fully nearly biffed my pod..looked it up and now its fixed
THANKS A MASSSSIVE BUNCH
Thanks
Thanks so much... I had no clue how to fix it and that did the trick!
Help ?
I've done that about ten times holding down the center and menu button , and it still won't turn off . it will turn black then turn right back on again .
I've tried letting it die and then recharging it , and i've erased it already it just won't turn off at all . What can I do now ?
Thanks!!!!
thanks so much i was starting to painc, it worked so well :D
Thanks
I had to play a song and then go back to the main menu and then press the play button to make it shut off. At least it's off, thanks!
Apple should of had this
The apple website had nothing on this, though judging from all the thankyous it should have been in the FAQ section
thankyou so much, it was so frustraiting.
Phew!
Thanks to "Thanks." :) Rebooting wasn't enough, I needed to follow the additional steps of selecting a menu item (I didn't actually play a song, just clicked an item in the menu) then going back to the menu again after the reboot before I could shut it down.
Same here
Ditto...Thanks to you both for posting.
One Further Note:
Apparently my iPod was particularly stubborn. I reset 5 times... nothing... it still wouldn't turn off. Then I read this guy's post and I tried it: go into a menu and then back out to the main menu before trying to shut off. Well, the thing turned off for about 3 seconds and then it just popped right back again.
The last thing I tried (apparently the ULTIMATE RESET) was to reset with the headphones unplugged, go into a menu item when the thing comes back up, plug the headphones back in, go back to the main menu and THEN power down. This worked... but it leads me to think that there's some deeper problem that we're seeing here.
Has anyone else ever noticed that plugging in or unplugging the headphones causes your player to "wake up"? I think this problem with the iPods not turning off has something to do with that feature... like unplugging and replugging your headphones into the device causes it to wear out or maybe dirt is getting in there and shorting something. I don't have a solution for you... but if there's anyone smarter than me who wants to look into it, it might lead to a more permanant fix.