Galaxy S6: How to Force a Reboot

Without a removable battery, a battery pull is not possible so here is how you can force a reboot on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.

This method to force a reboot has actually been in Samsung devices for a while. The thing is, most of them(at least the smartphones) have had a removable battery so not very many people knew about it. When a device has a removable battery, the thing that most people do is to simply pull the battery out when they need to force it to reboot.

This is quick, it’s easy and as long as the device is truly locked down(and unresponsive) then there’s no harm in it.

Since the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge do not have a removable battery, users have had to learn alternative ways to force a reboot. This is just the nature of the beast when we have complex devices like smartphones and tablets. No piece of software out there is free from bugs and sometimes things just get locked up from all of the data flowing within the software. Sometimes there’s a hardware conflict that can cause the device to get locked up too. This is less common but there are some times when interacting with the phone can make the software freeze up because of things that the software is doing in the background.

Either way, these things happen and they aren’t the end of the world. If it’s happening a lot then you might want to consider performing a factory reset on the Galaxy S6 but once a month or so isn’t bad and it can be chalked up to buggy software(sometimes within the Android code or sometimes within the code of an application you are using). So do the following if your Galaxy S6 has locked up and you need to force it to reboot.

Galaxy S6 Force Reboot

1. Press and Hold the Power and Volume Down Buttons at the Same Time
2. Continue Holding These Buttons for 10+ Seconds
3. When the Galaxy S6 Starts to Reboot, Let Go of These Buttons

Explanation

It really is as simple as that. The secret button combination is the Power button and the Volume Down button. So simply press and hold both of these buttons down at the same time and continue holding them until you notice your Galaxy S6/S6 Edge reboot. The amount of time that it takes for the device to reset can vary depending on how fast you are counting. Generally though, counting to ten should be enough time but you should still continue holding them until the device resets. When it starts to reboot, you should then let go of both of these buttons immediately.

If your Galaxy S6 screen is stuck on something then all of a sudden you will see it turn black and then the boot animations will appear. You’ll notice the Galaxy S6/S6 Edge will go through the typical boot cycle and then you’ll be taken back into the regular Android OS. From here you can unlock the device and go about your business. If you see it lock up again in the same place that it did before then there could be something wrong with the app/code. As mentioned, you might want to perform a factory reset or you could try to wiping the cache partition of the Galaxy S6 as well. Clearing the cache partition will not lose any of your data so that should be your first troubleshooting step.