How to turn off AMBER alerts on an iPhone

Unless you’re completely new to cellphones, you’ve probably been startled at least once by a government emergency alert. In the US, these alerts include AMBER warnings for abducted children. If you’re finding emergency alerts more disruptive than useful, you can (potentially) turn them off. We’ll explain the details below.

How to disable AMBER and other emergency alerts on an iPhone

The first thing to be aware of is that in some regions, you can’t disable emergency alerts. The local government may consider them so essential — say, for things like evacuation orders — that it’s illegal for carriers and/or phone makers to suppress them.

Where they can be disabled, here’s what to do:

• Open the Settings app and tap Notifications.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and find Government Alerts. If this section is missing, disabling alerts isn’t an option.
• Toggle alert types to your preferences.

In the US or Puerto Rico, you can additionally control whether you receive test alerts. These are off by default anyway, but you can quickly toggle them with devices running iOS 15.4 or later:

• Go to Settings > Notifications.
• Find Test Alerts, and toggle them off.