Galaxy S7: How to Boot into Recovery Mode

In today’s tutorial, I’m going to walk you through the process for booting into the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and Galaxy S7 Recovery mode.

I’ve talked to you this week about various special boot modes that you should know about with Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. First I showed you about the Maintenance Boot Mode for the Galaxy S7. Then I showed you how to boot the Galaxy S7 into Download Mode. I even walked you through how to boot the Galaxy S7 into Safe Mode in case you need to temporarily disable 3rd party applications.

Today’s tutorial will walk you through how to get into what is arguably the most important boot mode for the Galaxy S7 and that is the Recovery Mode.

Recovery Mode for Android can be different for the various OEMs out there, and they can also be different if you are running a custom recovery like TWRP or CWM. For Samsung’s stock Android recovery though, you’ll be able to do some tasks like booting into Bootloader Mode(which is sometimes called Fastboot Mode), applying an update from either ADB or the SD card, clearing the cache partition or performing a factory reset. You can also view your recovery logs from here and mount /system as well, but most people will not be using either of these last two features.

So let’s not waste any time and let me show you how to boot the Galaxy S7 into Recovery Mode.

Galaxy S7 Recovery Mode

1. Power Off the Galaxy S7
2. When Completely Off, Press and Hold the Power Button, Home Button, and Volume Up Button at the Same Time
3. Continue Holding These Three Buttons Until You See the Blue “Recovery Booting” Text at the Top Right
4. Wait While the Galaxy S7 Boots into Recovery Mode
5. Then Use the Volume Up, Volume Down and Power Buttons to Navigation the Galaxy S7 Recovery Mode Menu

Explanation

To start off, we need to have the Galaxy S7 into a completely powered down state. If you are in the Android OS, then you can press and hold the Power button and then tap on the Power Off option twice in order to turn off the Galaxy S7. If your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge is in a bootloop, or maybe it’s a soft brick and just won’t complete the boot process, then you’ll need to press and hold the Power and Home buttons down to force the device to power down. Yesterday’s tutorial about how to boot the Galaxy S7 into Download Mode had us pressing and holding the Volume Down, Power and Home buttons during the boot process.

This time however, we’re going to be pressing and holding the Volume Up, Power and Home buttons during the boot process. If you press and hold these three buttons at the very start of the boot process then you’ll be taken into the special Recovery Mode or the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. You’ll first see the blue Recovery Booting test at the top and then you’ll see a mostly blue screen while the device does its thing and takes you into the actual Recovery Mode menu. This main menu is where you’ll be given access to all of the features offered in Android’s stock recovery. Again, if you have a custom recovery though, then you’ll be taken into TWRP or CWM or whatever other custom recovery you installed.

Either way, you’ll be in Recovery Mode and it’s from here where you’ll have access to its features. When you’re done with the Recovery Mode, you can select the Reboot System Now option and this will take you back into the core Android OS with all of your applications.