You might want to exercise caution if you’re occupied with whatever it is you do to drain the battery on your iPhone and you notice an orange dot on the screen.
Given the variety of functions available on phones, it makes logical sense to provide users with a means of learning topics they may not be aware of but still need to comprehend.
The purpose of the orange dot is to inform you something, but depending on what you’re doing, it may be a harmless message or something much darker.
Put simply, that orange dot indicates that an app is using the phone’s microphone, and there are many situations in which that is entirely OK.
On the other hand, some iPhone owners were concerned about seeing the orange dot while they weren’t using the microphone for anything.
Some people worry that their phone is listening to them, and if you’re not sure why the orange dot is on, you may have reason to be concerned.
People have been cautioned that there may be serious issues if they see the dot and aren’t using anything that requires the microphone to be on.
Although many who found out about this reported feeling “quite alarmed” upon seeing the orange dot, the most frequent reason given is that they were using an app that they had forgotten about.
The best thing to do if you’re not sure which app it is is to keep closing them until the dot vanishes.
If it doesn’t work, turn off the phone. If the orange dot is still there when you turn it back on, you should start to worry.
Even though there are some concerns, wouldn’t it be preferable to have some sort of visual cue when an app on your phone is utilizing the microphone or camera rather than none at all?
To be clear, if you see an orange dot at the top of your phone screen, it indicates that one of the apps on your iPhone is currently using the microphone, which means it is recording your voice.
The presence of a green dot at the same location on the screen indicates that the app is using the phone’s camera rather than the microphone.
For instance, my phone’s screen displays a green dot when I pick it up and use the camera, and it briefly turns orange before shutting off completely when I close an app.
In essence, that’s my phone alerting me that the lens and microphone are in use since I’m using it as a camera. That’s pretty clear, but you should also be aware of the other apps you have open.
Go into your settings and adjust the permissions that different apps have to use your camera and microphone if you’re concerned about the dot showing up.
