How to Force Restart an iPhone and Enter Recovery Mode
As an iPhone user, you may face situations where your device gets stuck or unresponsive. In such cases, restarting your phone can be the go-to solution to fix the issue.
But what happens when even a simple restart doesn’t work? That’s when you need to force restart your iPhone and enter recovery mode.
Force restarting an iPhone is a handy troubleshooting technique that can help resolve many issues like frozen screens, app crashes, and unresponsiveness. Recovery mode is another useful tool that allows you to restore or update your iPhone’s operating system in case of serious software problems.
In this article, we’ll guide you on how to force restart an iPhone and enter recovery mode step by step.
There are now two distinct families of iPhones and two different ways of performing some of the most basic tasks. Inputs, like taking a screenshot or restarting your device, are a bit different on the latest models.
In 2016, Apple dropped the mechanical home button in favour of a capacitive touch panel. Less moving parts means a more reliable device, but since the new iPhone home button relies on software, it’s no longer used to hard reset your device.
Let’s look at how to perform a hard reset on each iPhone and how to get into recovery mode so that we may reinstall iOS.
Force Rebooting and Recovery Mode 101
You’ll hopefully never need to reset your iPhone, but occasionally something goes wrong.
When your device becomes completely unresponsive, you can choose between waiting for the battery to deplete and initiating a hard reset. A hard reset is basically the equivalent of pulling the power plug, forcing your iPhone to shut down and start up again.
Recovery mode takes this a step further, putting your device into a state where you can reinstall iOS by connecting your iPhone to a computer running iTunes. If your iPhone refuses to boot or crashes on startup, you’ll need to put the device into recovery mode (below) in order to rescue it.
Note that when you reinstall iOS, you’ll lose all the data on your iPhone. This isn’t a problem if you make regular backups, which you can do using iCloud or locally in iTunes. Unfortunately, you can’t back up your device in recovery mode since iTunes will only offer to restore the firmware.
As such, if you are stuck with an iPhone that won’t boot and you don’t have a backup, there’s nothing you can do to save your data.
For iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone X is Apple’s top-tier iPhone, notable for its inclusion of facial recognition technology Face ID and dramatic redesign that sees the entire front of the device function as a display. The iPhone 8 was released at the same time but lacks Face ID.
Note: You’ll need to perform these button combinations fairly quickly.
How to Restart the iPhone 8
- Press then release the volume up button.
- Immediately press then release the volume down button.
- Hold the side button until you see an Apple logo.
How to Put the iPhone 8 Into Recovery Mode
- Connect your iPhone to a computer and launch iTunes.
- Press then release the volume up button.
- Immediately press then release the volume down button.
- Hold the side button, and don’t let go when you see the Apple logo.
- Keep holding till you see the Recovery Mode screen.
Finally Ready to Recover Your iPhone
When you put your device into recovery mode, you’ll have 15 minutes to begin reinstalling iOS before your device will automatically exit Recovery Mode. You’ll need to repeat the combination of button presses in order to put it back into Recovery Mode if this happens.
Your device will not show up as normal in iTunes while in Recovery Mode, and you’ll see an error message like the one above. You can always choose to update the firmware or restore the existing version.
Once your iPhone reboots as normal, you must log in with your credentials to remove Apple’s, Activation Lock. This is also why you should never buy an iPhone if the seller refuses to unlock it in front of you.
