What Every Icon in the iPhone Status Bar Means

The iPhone status bar packs a lot of meaning into very little space. Most of it falls into three groups: what network you are on, what the phone is currently doing, and what you have switched on. Here is what each symbol actually means, starting with the ones people ask about most.

What do 5G UC, 5G UW, and 5G+ mean?

These are carrier labels, not iOS features, which is why they differ depending on who you pay each month. All three indicate that you are on a faster tier of 5G than the baseline:

• 5G UC — T-Mobile's "Ultra Capacity", covering its mid-band and millimetre-wave network
• 5G UW — Verizon's "Ultra Wideband", its equivalent higher-speed tier
• 5G+ — AT&T's label for the same idea
• 5G — plain low-band 5G, the widest coverage and the slowest of the 5G tiers. In practice it is often no faster than good LTE.

This matters if you are building a mockup: the label has to match the carrier you are depicting. A screenshot showing 5G UW on an AT&T phone is wrong in a way that anyone on Verizon will spot instantly.

What about LTE, 4G, 3G, and E?

These are older network generations, in descending order of speed. LTE is the mature 4G standard and is still extremely common. A lone E means EDGE, a 2G-era technology that is effectively unusable for modern apps — if you see it, you are somewhere very remote or something has gone wrong. Some regions still show 3G, though carriers have been shutting those networks down.

Wi-Fi and cellular are not shown together

When your iPhone is connected to Wi-Fi, it shows the Wi-Fi arcs and drops the data label. It does not display Wi-Fi and 5G UC side by side, because the data label describes the connection currently carrying your traffic. The signal bars for cellular reception can still appear alongside Wi-Fi, since those indicate whether you could take a call.

This is the single most common mistake in fabricated screenshots, and it is worth getting right.

The coloured dots

Introduced in iOS 14, these are privacy indicators and they are among the most useful symbols on the phone:

• Orange dot — an app is using the microphone right now
• Green dot — an app is using the camera, or the camera and microphone together

If one appears when you are not knowingly recording anything, it is worth checking which app is responsible. Swiping down into Control Centre names the app at the top.

The arrow, the moon, and the lock

• A filled arrow — an app is using your location right now. A hollow or outlined arrow generally means location is being used under specific conditions, such as a geofence.
• Crescent moon — Do Not Disturb, or a Focus mode, is switched on and notifications are being held back.
• Lock with a circular arrow — portrait orientation lock is on, which is why your screen is refusing to rotate.
• Aeroplane — Aeroplane Mode, with all radios off. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be switched back on independently while it stays enabled.

Coloured pills and bars

On phones with a Dynamic Island or a notch, an active state shows as a coloured pill rather than a full-width bar:

• Green — a phone call is in progress
• Red — the screen is being recorded, or a voice memo is being captured
• Blue — an app is actively using your location in the background, or Personal Hotspot has a device connected

The battery, and the number next to it

The battery outline fills to show remaining charge. A lightning bolt means it is charging; on some models a small plug appears when the battery is full and still connected. A yellow battery indicates Low Power Mode, and a red one means you are below 20%.

The percentage is a setting rather than a default, found under Settings → Battery. Plenty of people leave it off, which is worth remembering when you are building a mockup — showing a bare battery outline is perfectly realistic.

Less common symbols

• Two interlocking rings — Personal Hotspot is active and a device is connected
• VPN — you are connected to a virtual private network
• A small padlock — on older iOS versions, the screen is locked
• An alarm clock — an alarm is set, shown on older iOS versions and removed in more recent ones

Why any of this matters for design work

If you are producing a phone mockup for a deck, a tutorial, or a portfolio piece, the status bar is the part your eye checks without being asked. Getting the details internally consistent — one network indicator, a plausible battery level, no contradictory symbols — is what separates a mockup that reads as a phone from one that reads as a drawing of a phone.

The related question of what time to display has its own answer, and it is a more interesting story than you would expect: why every iPhone ad shows 9:41.