Android Safe Mode: A Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling Safe Mode on Your Device for Troubleshooting and Diagnostics

There comes a time when an Android smartphone starts acting funny. Apps suddenly take ages to load, won’t load at all, or run sluggishly than usual. Times when services shut down by themselves, or ugly ads show up from nowhere. There are a long list of things that could happen to make your Android experience infuriating.

Most of the time, it’s an app you installed (last) that causes the undesirable behaviour, and a simple reboot could resolve the issue. Sometimes, the problem could be so serious the phone becomes close to unusable, and when rebooting doesn’t suffice, then booting to ‘safe mode’ could be your saving grace.

What is Safe Mode?

Safe Mode is an Android feature that allows you to troubleshoot your Android device once enabled. When you boot to Safe Mode, your device boots up without loading any third party app or non-essential software. This means you get the opportunity to uninstall the rogue app worrying your life. With safe mode enabled, you can back up your data or even reset the device, depending on how severe the issue is.

How do I boot to/enable Safe Mode in Android?

There are different ways of booting Android devices to Safe Mode, because of the different shapes, sizes, skins, and software Android devices appear in. We shall highlight the diverse ways of doing this:

Method 1: (For most Jelly Bean devices)

• Hold down the Power button on your device.
• Long-press the Power off option that appears.
• A dialogue box appears asking if you want to reboot to safe mode may pop up.
• Tap OK.
• When the phone reboots, you see Safe Mode watermarked at the bottom left of the  screen. This tells you that you are in Safe Mode.

Note: If the box doesn’t appear, go on and try Method 2.

Method 2: (For older versions of Android and some Jelly Bean phones)

• Turn off your phone.
• Once it’s off, Press power button to turn it on.
• While booting, hold down both the volume up and volume down buttons and keep them held.

Once the phone comes on. You should see a ‘Safe Mode’ watermark at the bottom left of the screen.

Alternate Methods to enable Safe Mode in Android

1. On some Android’s, you can try holding down Menu button instead of volume up and down while it’s booting.

2. Holding down the Volume down button as soon as the manufacturer logo appears.

3. On some Samsung models, You have to tap the capacitive buttons while the phone is booting.

When you’re done working on Safe Mode, easily revert by simply turning off your device, and switching it back on normally.

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