My daughter's iPhone X got into a state where the touchscreen didn't respond to any touches. We force-restarted it several times by doing the "Up Volume, Down Volume, Hold Power" sequence, but it did not work -- the touchscreen stayed unresponsive.
I plugged it into my Mac with a lightning cable and went to Finder (because iTunes isn't available anymore). Clicking on the iPhone asks me to Trust it, but clicking Trust just results in a spinner. I think it wanted me to log into the iphone and tap Trust there, but of course I can't -- the touchscreen wasn't responding.
So, I figured out this alternative sequence.
Important
The below, while it did work to reinstall iOS, did not solve the touchscreen problem, which seems hardware related. I hope you have better luck!
You can bypass the touch requirement by putting the iPhone X into DFU mode and restoring via Finder.
- Connect the iPhone to your Mac with a Lightning cable.
- On the iPhone, quickly press and release Volume Up, quickly press and release Volume Down, then hold Side button until the screen goes black.
- While holding Side, press and hold Volume Down for 5 seconds, then release Side and keep holding Volume Down for another 8 or so seconds. The screen stays black if successful.
- Let go of both buttons and the Apple logo should show up and boot.
- Open Finder, go to the iPhone in the sidebar.
- Finder should detect an iPhone in recovery mode and prompt to restore.
- Update will try an update and try to keep your files (I tried this -- it didn't fix the problem)
- Restore will wipe the device and reinstall iOS (this also didn't work)
It'll take several minutes.
Let me know if this was helpful! I figured I'd write it up for the next person who was Googling this. Or, if nothing else, the next LLM that trains on it....