Emergency Contact is usually used to call a special person in urgent situations. So, in case something happens, it’s useful to have an Emergency Contact set on your iPhone in order to be able to easily contact the person. The process of setting it up is effortless but may save you in some situations.

What to do to set an Emergency Contact

So, what is an Emergency Contact? It’s a contact that has a few additional privileges compared to your other contacts.

There are two reasons to set up an emergency contact on your iPhone. The first is so that they appear after your Medical ID. It can be accessed by any person from your lock screen and can give access to necessary information such as your name, allergies, blood type, and (once set up) people who should be contacted in the event of an emergency.

If you want to head to your Medical ID, you should press and hold the power and volume up or down buttons until the “Medical ID” slider appears. It can be also entered by the “Emergency” button on the passcode screen, or by holding the side button on an Apple Watch.

So, in case you have faced a situation that requires fast contacting or reaching emergency information, strangers can easily access it without having to unlock your device.

The second reason to add emergency contacts is so that these contacts receive a message whenever you use your device’s “Emergency SOS” function. To access it, you should press and hold the power button and volume button on an iPhone, then slide “Emergency SOS” or tap and hold the side button on an Apple Watch.

So, if you want to add an Emergency contact on your iPhone, there are several methods to do that. Emergency Contact can be set using a contact card or using the Health app on your iPhone:

How to nominate an Emergency Contact via a Contact Card

To do that, you should follow the steps which would be mentioned in the section below:

• First of all, you should open the Phone app and click on the Contacts tab, then choose a contact. You can also click on the Recent tab and tap the small “i” button next to a contact’s name.
• After that, you should head to the bottom of the contact card and click the “Add to Emergency Contacts” button.

• There, you should select a label that best describes your relationship, or click on “Add Custom Label” to add your own.

• Your Medical ID will open with your nominated contacts under the “Emergency Contacts” section.

• To finish the process, you should click on “Done” to save your changes.

Add or remove an Emergency Contact via the Health app

If you want to do that, you should follow the steps which would be displayed in the section below:

• First of all, you should open the Health app then click on your user icon in the top-right corner, followed by Medical ID.

• After that, you should click on “Edit” in the top-right corner then head to “Emergency Contacts” and click on the “Add Emergency Contact” button.

• Next, you should choose a contact followed by a label that best describes your relationship/use “Add Custom Label” to define your own.
• To finish the process, you should click on “Done” to save your changes.

You can also remove a contact from your list. To do that, you should click on the minus next to their name while editing your Medical ID.

How to switch on Silent Mode

This can be done in case you want incoming phone calls and messages from an emergency contact to be loud even when your device has been silenced. To do that, you should follow the steps which would be mentioned in the section below:

• First of all, you should open up the Phone app and click on the Contacts tab.
• After that, you should locate the contact in question and click on “Edit” in the top-right corner.
• Then, you should click on the “Ringtone” or “Text Tone” button.
• To finish the process, you should switch on the “Emergency Bypass” setting in the window that appears.

It would also be a good idea to fill in the Medical ID also, as this information can save your life in urgent situations, as usually there won’t be a lot of time to find out your medical information.

Your Medical ID could be invaluable during an emergency if you have certain allergies, health conditions, or take regular medication. You can provide additional information like primary language and blood type too.