How to Find Wireless Emergency Alerts on Your Smartphone

The wireless alerts are on by default. You can turn off all but the presidential alerts.

Fewer households watch broadcast or cable television these days, and not all areas have outdoor warning sirens. However, more than 9 in 10 adults 50 and older own a smartphone, so these mobile phone alerts may be your most readily available information before and during an emergency.

How do you read these alerts if you don’t get to your screen before the electronic warning disappears?

The alerts aren’t lost for good, but they don’t always pop up again when you log in to your smartphone. Simple flip phones that are not “smart” have instructions that vary by manufacturer, so consult your user’s guide or search online.

Tap Emergency alert history and the next screen will show past alerts your Android phone received.

AARP

How to read emergency alerts on an Android

The easiest way to check out the wireless emergency alerts on many Android smartphones is to swipe down from the upper right corner of your smartphone screen.

But if you think you've missed one or want to re-read an alert you've already received, swipe down on your screen until you see a search bar. Type Emergency alert history. Tap the result and tap it again in the options you see. You will have a list, probably for as far back as you've owned your phone.

To enable or disable emergency alerts on your phone, follow these steps:

1. Open ⚙️ Settings | Safety and emergency | Wireless emergency alerts.

2. Tap the toggle switch next to Allow alerts to enable emergency notifications. You can select the type of alerts you'd like to receive.

3. Swipe over to Alert preferences to pick options for vibration, text or spoken alert messages.

Be aware that, unlike Apple iPhones, several manufacturers build Android smartphones and not all Android operating systems are exactly alike. The instructions above are for a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Your phone carrier may have instructions available online for your model.

How to read iPhone emergency alerts

Emergency alerts on iPhones are listed in your phone’s Notification Center along with text messages you might have missed, phone calls you didn’t pick up and app alerts you’ve chosen to receive. Unlike Android phones, which can retain the alerts for the life of the phone, announcements in the Notification Center are available for only seven days.

Sometimes you might hear an alert, touch your iPhone, be prompted for your PIN and then can’t find the warning. You’ll find it in the Notification Center, which you can access in one of two ways:

• On your already unlocked iPhone, swipe down from the top middle, just below the selfie camera lens, to pull down Notification Center messages.
• From your locked screen, swipe up from the center of the screen to see your notification history. If you swipe from the bottom middle of your screen, you’ll be prompted to enter your passcode. If you do, follow the instructions for an unlocked phone.

A caveat: If you’ve cleared a notification or read it previously, you cannot see it again in the Notification Center. If you’re looking for an emergency alert, retrieving it on your device again won’t be possible.

Old text messages can be found in iMessage. Voicemail and recently received calls are in the Phone app anchored at the bottom left corner of your screen. And some other apps, but not all, will show you their notifications when you open the app.