Android is one of the most popular smartphone on the market, up there along with iOS from Apple. Android is also an open source project, which makes it available for all companies and nerds alike who want to tinker with the android. Thats why each smartphone brands have their own unique operating system, like Oppo with their ColorOS, Xiaomi with their MIUI, Huawei with their EMUI.
Android also gives us free will to install anything on our phone. When you are given this much of freedom, there is a possibility that some of the apps you installed are making your device really weird and glitchy. Random reboots, malfunctioning touchscreen, random app crashes, random wifi/mobile data restarts can occur when this happens. The problem can be caused by so many things ranging from a bugged app to a faulty OS update. This is a fairly common problems for android users, unfortunately. Worry not! One of many ways to fix it is by rebooting your android device to safe mode, test things out and see where the problem lies.
Android Safe Mode
Android safe mode works exactly like windows PC ones. Your device run on absolute barebones of your software. No third party apps, even some of your preinstalled apps got their updates rolled back to its old versions, your mobile data doesnt work (wifi still work though). Just like the factory reset version of your android device, albeit only temporary.
You can use this to test things out if your device run smoothly when safe mode is on. Because it only run on barebones software, you can gauge if your device’s errors comes from the actual device and its system, or from a third party app you installed. Maybe its that really obscure-looking PDF viewer you downloaded from a random site (that is not google play store) that is causing weird random glitches on your phone? Or maybe that new cool-looking keyboard app you installed that made your keyboard freezes randomly when you type? Either way, it will help the troubleshooting proccess tremendously.
How Do You Reboot Your Android Device to Save Mode?
To reboot, follow these steps. While these screenshots are on Xiaomi A2 with Android One OS running on Android 10 (updated 2 weeks ago), these steps are valid for android 4.1 and above.
- Press your power button until the popup shows.
- Locate your phone’s power button and press it until the popup containing various option shows up.
- Press and hold the power off button.
- You need to actually press and hold, and then a dialog will show up (if you just tap it, it will shut down normally).
- Press OK and proceed rebooting to safe mode.
- If you press the power off button correctly, this dialog will show up:
- Now press OK and proceed rebooting to safe mode.
- Your device will turn off, and you need to press the power button again, and your device will power on again but this time, its on safe mode.
Here is a picture of the app drawer on safe mode:
For comparison, here is a picture of the app drawer in normal mode:
As you can see, when the safe mode is enabled, there’s a lot of apps that are disabled, networking is set to airplane mode (you can disable airplane mode and activate wifi,though). Now you can begin your troubleshooting proccess to find that pesky glitch or bug you are currently trying to fix. Once its over, and you want to get back to normal mode, simply restart your phone and it should be back on normal mode again.
Steps for Android 4
Now if you have a really old phone that runs on android 4 and below, follow the steps below:
- Press the power button
- Choose the power off dialog to turn off your phone
- Wait until your phone turns off completely
- Press the power button to turn on your phone
- As soon as the screen activated and shows your phone brand’s logo, press volume down and hold it until the android system loads up fully
- If pressing volume up doesnt work, try pressing volume up and down at the same time and hold it.
- Once the troubleshooting is over, just turn off your phone and turn it on again to boot back to normal mode.
Now you can easily put your phone into safe mode. This will allow you to safely customize your Android device and have better control over your apps.
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