How to Boot the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ into Safe Mode

To troubleshoot battery life, performance and even overheating issues on the Galaxy S8 and S8+, you will need to boot into Safe Mode.

Newer updates to Android are getting more and more strict about what our applications can and cannot do in the background. The issue isn’t completely solved, but there are still a number of issues that can appear from either a poorly coded application and game, or even simply a bug with an application and game.

Android no longer gives unrestricted access to battery stats like they did before so most people are left clueless as to what is wrong.

The majority of the time an issue with performance, overheating and poor battery life is caused by one of the 3rd-party applications you installed from the Play Store. If you have root access then you can monitor what is going on with BetterBatteryStats, but everyone else will have to troubleshoot things manually. And the first step to troubleshooting any of these issues is to boot into the special Galaxy S8 Safe Mode so those applications are disabled.

Galaxy S8 Safe Mode

1. Press and hold the Power button for a few seconds
2. Let go of the Power button when the Power Menu appears
3. Then tap and hold the Power Off option
4. Let go of the Power Off option when the Safe Mode button appears
5. Then tap on the Safe Mode button to boot the Galaxy S8 into Safe Mode

Explanation

Booting into Safe Mode used to require holding down a combination of buttons during the boot cycle but that is no longer the case. The shortcut is now hidden within the Power Menu for most devices so it is faster and easier to get to than before. So to start, we simply need to press and hold the Power button for a few seconds until the Power Menu appears. You can then let the button go and then proceed to tap and hold the Power Off option for a few seconds.

This will eventually trigger a hidden menu where you’ll see a Galaxy S8 Safe Mode button will appear. When that happens, you can life your thumb or finger and then simply tap on the Safe Mode button that just showed up. This will trigger the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ to reboot and then it will boot right back into Android. Except this time you will see a Safe Mode watermark sitting at the bottom left corner of the screen at all times.

This is to remind you that you are in Safe Mode and there’s also a notification to remind you of the same thing. While you are in the Safe Mode on the Galaxy S8, all of your 3rd-party applications will be disabled. The applications that are disabled will depend entirely on where you got your phone (which carrier, retailer, etc). Since the issue may or may not be one of these 3rd-party applications, the first test to see if your battery life, performance or overheating issues are fixed is with Safe Mode.

While you are in the Galaxy S8 Safe Mode, try to use your phone as you normally would. Naturally you can’t use your 3rd-party applications but use it for as long as you can without it (I know it’s tough). You want to see if you can trigger those battery life, performance or overheating issues while you are in Safe Mode. If you can, and the issue persists, then it’s not a 3rd-party application that is causing it. The culprit is then either a hardware issue, or something with the Android OS.

If it’s the Android OS that is the issue, a factory reset will most likely fix it (although you may also want to manually flash the firmware to be 100% sure). If the culprit is not the Android OS and it’s not the 3rd-party applications, then it’s likely hardware related and you’ll want to see if you can get a refund/replacement for your unit.