OnePlus 2: How to Boot into Safe Mode

If you think a 3rd-party application is causing some trouble with your device, let me show you how to boot the OnePlus 2 into Safe Mode.

There are over a million applications in the Google Play Store and they are great at customizing all the little aspects of the Android OS. If you don’t like how your default launcher is, then simply install a custom one. If you don’t like how your default icons look, then style them with a custom icon pack in your custom launcher. Google allows developers to create these unique applications that go deep into the Android OS to customize the software to how we want it.

There’s a downside to all of this freedom though. As the famous superhero’s uncle once said, with great power comes great responsibility and some developers don’t(or can’t) account for all the little variances when publishing an application for billions of smartphones and tablets. Developers can’t possibly test their apps on every single device with every single possible variable to account for the number of people using Android.

So to compensate for that, we(the user) need to understand what our applications are doing and how to fix an issue when it arises. This is where Safe Mode for the OnePlus 2 comes into play.

Safe Mode is a special boot mode to help you troubleshoot some issues that you might be coming across. When you boot the OnePlus 2 into Safe Mode, it will disable any and all 3rd-party applications until you reboot the device again. So, for example, if you have noticed your OnePlus 2 is heating up more than usual. . .or maybe you’re seeing the excessive battery drain all of a sudden, then booting the device into Safe Mode is the first step to helping you figure out what the root cause of the issue is.

Sadly, Safe Mode won’t tell you which application is causing an issue, but if you don’t notice the same thing happening while you are in this special boot mode then you can start to uninstall some of your recently installed 3rd-party applications until you find out which one it is. So let’s talk about what it takes to boot the OnePlus 2 into Safe Mode.

OnePlus 2 Safe Mode

1. Power Down the OnePlus 2
2. Once Off, Press and Hold the Power Button Until the Device Starts Booting
3. As Soon as You See Android Booting Up, Let Go of the Power Button
4. Once You Let Go, Immediately Start Holding Down the Volume Up and Volume Down Buttons
5. Continue Holding These Two Buttons Until Android is Completely Booted
6. Once You Reach the Lock Screen, Let Go of These Two Buttons and Unlock Your Phone Like Normal

Explanation

As mentioned, you want to boot into Safe Mode if you ever suspect that a third-party application is having a negative effect on the overall experience of the OnePlus 2. It is fairly common to see someone install an application from the Google Play Store and see it do things like ruin the performance or battery life of an Android device. However, it’s also common to see Android do this on its own from various things like an OTA update or corrupt cache data. So it’s not always a 3rd-party application that causes these types of symptoms, but this troubleshooting step will help you to narrow down the culprit.

So, go ahead and power down the OnePlus 2 just like you normally would. When the device is completely off, you can then press and hold the Power button until it starts booting back up. When it starts to boot up, immediately let go of the Power button and start pressing both the Volume Up and Volume Down buttons at the same time. You’ll want to continue holding these two buttons down until your OnePlus 2 has booted up and you see the lock screen. From here, simply unlock your device like normal and notice there is a watermark at the bottom left to show that you did everything properly.

Until you reboot the OnePlus 2, your 3rd-party applications will not be accessible in Safe Mode. You’ll just have to try to use the device without your third-party applications to see if you notice the same issues you did before(poor battery life, overheating, etc). If you don’t notice those issues then it is almost certainly being caused by one of your applications and you need to start uninstalling them one at a time until you figure out which one it is. This is a slow and sometimes annoying process but once you know which one it is, you’ll then know to stay away from it in the future.

You could install an application like BetterBatteryStats(if you have root access) or GSAM Battery Monitor and let them watch your device for a day or two. This could help you to figure out what is causing excessive battery drain or even overheating as well. These two issues can be caused by an application keeping your device awake or running in the background all the time when it shouldn’t be. So if you see an application at the top of the list in one of these two applications, and you barely use it in the first place, then that might be the first one you try to uninstall.