What Causes a Phone to go into Safe Mode, and How Do You Get Out of Safe Mode?

[TechTimid]

Currently, both of our phones are in Safe Mode, and the icons on my Home Screen are all jumbled up, but there's probably some other reason for that, I have no idea.

I went out today shopping and took my phone with me, took a couple of pictures and called my husband at home on his phone, everything was normal.

Then when I came home, I let him look at the pictures on my phone and I don't think anything unusual happened.

He changed the wallpaper on his phone, and suddenly his phone was in Safe Mode, and when he powered it off, it started again on its own.

I looked at mine again and it was in Safe Mode too, and my Home Screen was all jumbled up. First time that ever happened on the phone, but we really just started using them recently.

Can you tell me what is causing the phone to go into Safe Mode, and what can I do to get it out of that mode? Also, get the icons on my Home Screen back to normal?

We both tried to power off, and that didn't help.

 

[Javier P]

That's very strange, the phone shouldn't boot into safe mode on its own and to get back to normal mode you only need to power the phone off and back on.

I'm not sure what you mean by all your icons are jumbled up. Can you take a screenshot of your home screen and post it here? To take the screenshot press & hold the power and volume down keys at the same time.

 

[Javier P]

Just a thought, are you both using a case on your phones? If so, take them out and try the power off & on again.

 

[TechTimid]

Sorry, I have things back to normal now. After we ate dinner I went back to the phones and restarted both of them, they were in ready mode when I left them.

When they restarted this time, the safe mode was off, so that's good now.

My icons were all jumbled up because there were 5 app icons on my home screen that weren't there before, not sure why they suddenly appeared, but they set everything off center.

I was able to touch and hold each of them, moving them to the top of the screen to X Remove, so they are no longer there.

I'm not sure what made this happen, but I'm learning slowly how to fix things. Now I just have my 2 speed dial contact icons, and the 5 original icons at the bottom of the screen, phone, message, contacts, camera and photos.

 

[Javier P]

No worries, glad everything is back to normal.

 

[TechTimid]

I looked it up in the phone user manual today, since my husband's phone was oddly on Safe Mode again.

Seems that when he was powering it down, he kept his finger on it too long instead of just lightly tapping it, which made it restart in Safe Mode.

I was probably unknowingly doing that myself, since we're not used to using touch screens, we can press too hard or too long when we shouldn't. Learning period here, hopefully someday we'll be comfortable using our new smartphones.

 

[Javier P]

I looked it up in the phone user manual today, since my husband's phone was oddly on Safe Mode again.

Seems that when he was powering it down, he kept his finger on it too long instead of just lightly tapping it, which made it restart in Safe Mode.

I was probably unknowingly doing that myself, since we're not used to using touch screens, we can press too hard or too long when we shouldn't. Learning period here, hopefully someday we'll be comfortable using our new smartphones.

Oh, I see. Long press can trigger different options if you keep it longer than expected. There's a setting than can help you with this, go to settings - accessibility - touch & hold delay and select 'long'. This can help you to avoid unintended actions that the phone takes as a long press instead of a single tap.

 

[TechTimid]

Thanks for the tip Javier, appreciate it!