I’ve been talking about the various boot modes that come with Android lately with the Mi A2. While the other two actually give you access to features that aren’t accessible elsewhere, this one will take features away. So let me show you how to boot the Xiaomi Mi A2 into Safe Mode for various testing purposes.
Because of the way Android is built, many consider it to be a full-fledged operating system. This gives us the ability to do things like run apps in the background and customize various aspects of the user interface (keyboard, launcher, etc.). It’s actually this type of flexibility that can cause trouble with a smartphone.
Trouble such as poor battery life, sluggish performance, overheating, force closes, and more. All it takes is one poorly optimized application or game and one or all of these issues can appear virtually overnight. You can go from ending the day with 30% battery to needing a charger before you get home from a bad application or game.
The same can be said about the Xiaomi Mi A2 overheating, opening applications and games incredibly slowly, or just noticing other apps/features freezing the phone or causing them to force close. Thankfully, this can all be tested with a quick boot into what is known as Safe Mode.
How to Boot the Xiaomi Mi A2 into Safe Mode
- Press and hold the Power button down
- Let go of the Power button when the Power Menu appears
- Tap and hold on the Power Off option
- Let go of the screen when you see the Safe Mode dialog box appear
- Then tap the OK option and wait for the Mi A2 to reboot
- Once you boot back into Android you should see a Safe Mode watermark in the bottom left corner
- While your Mi A2 is in Safe Mode all 3rd-party applications will be disabled (and grayed out)
- If you try to open a 3rd-party application while in Safe Mode then you’ll see this Toast message appear at the bottom of the screen
So as I mentioned before, Safe Mode is actually going to take away features from your smartphone instead of giving you access to additional ones. That’s because we use Safe Mode as a troubleshooting step when there is something wrong with our device.
So for example, Safe Mode is your first troubleshooting step if you notice your phone is overheating, opening apps/games slowly, chewing through the battery or simply just being glitchy in general. Because it disables these 3rd-party applications and games we can begin to diagnose the issue.
How Does the Xiaomi Mi A2 Safe Mode Help?
It may be time consuming to troubleshoot random issues like those mentioned above but most are happy to deal with these than to be locked down in a walled garden mobile OS. If you notice your phone not working the way it did when you first got it then the first troubleshooting step I recommend is booting into Safe Mode.
Once you have the Mi A2 in Safe Mode then you can try to use it as you normally would. So for example, if you watch YouTube videos at night and notice the phone has started to overheat (or use a lot of battery) when it didn’t do that before then do the same while you are in Safe Mode.
If you normally end the day with 10% or 25% of your battery left but all of a sudden you need to charge it before you lay down for the night. Then try to use the phone as you normally would (all day) while you are in Safe Mode. This can be difficult to do since you lose access to 3rd-party apps like Facebook and such.
You just want to do the best you can to replicate the smartphone usage while you are in Safe Mode. If you can do this and notice the issue is fixed then you need to find which 3rd-party application or game is causing the issue in the first place.
What if Safe Mode Doesn’t Help?
If you boot into Safe Mode and you are still noticing that it overheats, that the battery is being depleted so quickly, or whatever other issue you’re trying to fix then it can’t be caused by a 3rd-party application because they are all disabled. So instead, you need to look into the Android OS itself.
Maybe one of your 1st-party apps (like Chrome, Gmail, Play Store, Play Services, etc.) is acting up and you need to wipe the cache data for them. Or maybe something happened deeper inside after you applied an OTA update. If that is the case then you need to perform a factory reset and/or manually flash the factory images back onto the device.
How to Boot the Xiaomi Mi A2 Out of Safe Mode
Getting out of Safe Mode on the Mi A2 is even easier than getting in. To do this, all you have to do is follow these steps. . .
- Press and hold the Power button to bring up the Power Menu
- Tap on the Restart option
- Wait for the Mi A2 to reboot
As long as you’re not holding down any buttons while the phone reboots then you should reboot right back into the regular Android OS. This means the watermark will be gone from the bottom left corner and that you can begin to use 3rd-party applications again.
From here. . .you can either start looking for bad that 3rd-party application/mobile game, or you can begin the process of doing a factory reset to see if that will fix the issues you’re having.
