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How to Start Your Android Phone in Safe Mode / How to Get Out of a Force Close Loop

July 19, 2010

I recently checked out a port of Samsung’s TouchWiz: the launcher that is featured on the Android powerhouse Samsung Galaxy S. The port, courtesy of xda-developer’s member rolle3k, is mainly intended for the Nexus One, although it worked fine on my HTC Desire as well. I loved the look of the icons in the app drawer – they were as stylish as in the hands-on videos of the Galaxy S that I’ve seen, but other than that I saw no reason to stop using LauncherPro.

A few days later, I tried another TouchWiz port available at the xda-developers – this time one that was made specifically for the HTC Desire. I won’t link to it here, because that .apk caused my very first Force Close Loop. A ‘force close loop’ is when an unstable application is involuntary closed by the system, and then it’s automatically launched again, then closed, and this goes on and on, and prevents you from accessing any of Android’s menus to kill the loop.

In my case, even rebooting my HTC Desire didn’t help, since the TouchWiz port was launched every time the phone was started. That’s when I turned to Google and learned about Android’s Safe Mode.

How to Start Your Android Phone in Safe Mode / How to Get Out of a Force Close Loop

HTC devices with hardware buttons:

  • Turn off your Android device. Even though you’re stuck in a force close loop, you should be able to do it the normal way – if not, just remove the battery.
  • Hold down the hardware Menu button on your phone.
  • While pressing the Menu button, turn on your phone and keep holding down the Menu button until your phone has fully started.
  • You should now see “Safe Mode” printed in the lower-left corner of your screen. When you’re in safe mode, no third-party apps are loaded, and you can easily uninstall the app that caused the force close loop by going to Settings > Applications > Manage applications.

Nexus One:

  • Turn off your Nexus One. Remove the battery if you have to.
  • Press the power button to start your phone, and just when the logo appears, press and hold the trackball. You should also be able to hold down the touch sensitive Menu button at this point, if you prefer that.
  • Keep pressing until you see the lock screen, and you should now be in safe mode.

Motorola Droid:

  • Turn off your Droid and slide open the hardware keyboard.
  • Press both the power button and the Menu button on the keyboard at the same time.
  • Keep holding the Menu key until you see the “Droid Eye”, and you feel your phone vibrate.
  • Your Droid should start and say “Safe Mode” in the lower-left corner of the screen.
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  • Anonymous

    Can anyone help me i accidently deleted my build.prop and reboot the device but it won’t open anymore its stuck with this logo android.

  • Babs

    Thank you for this.
    My HTC Desire HD was BootCycling for three days.
    I tried with instructions from various others which didn’t help.
    However I can’t offer you a completely clear victory, as previously I had repeatedly removed the battery, removed the 8Gb SD card and mounted it on my MacBook, removing the contents of the AppSaver folder, plus all photos, drawings, recordings…. stopped or uninstalled any apps I thought might be causing the problem, (whenever the phone stayed on long enough for me to do so!) etc., etc.

    About a week beforehand, I had installed GoLauncherEx and was enjoying its possibilities. Did I create too many note widgets and app-folders on my screens?

    I had then installed ADW and Claystone, to compare, but hadn’t yet started using them.
    Did I install too many apps? What?

    I really need to know what’s going on here….
    This has happened four or five times in 16 months, which I feel is undependable and just slightly ridiculous.

    I need to feel secure….
    Surely the Android system is equipped with some way of informing me when I’ve gone too far in one way or another? And if not, why not?

    AVG is there to tell me if there’s something dangerous going on, and having used it on Windows for years, I expect it to do the same on Android. As things stand, I have no real way of knowing how I can prevent this catastrophe from happening again in future.

    Is my SD card faulty? Or is it the hard drive? Maybe it’s a software fault….?

    Although Mac has been my mainframe for years, I started on Windows and am now ventu ring into Linux. Being an undoubted wannabe-geek, I was intrigued by and attracted to the Android system, and actually followed the phone with an Android tablet. But unfortunately, at this moment, I am seriously questioning whether it is anything other than a superficial toy.

    Especially when, at times like these, I’m forced to pull the ancient Windows Mobile 5 out of the bottom drawer because it still does what it said on the box roundabout eight years ago! (Except for WiFi!! And syncing is still a nightmare of multiple entries, so I’ve ditched that idea completely!)

    But basically I switch it on, report my activities in the calendar knowing that I can transfer the entries to various other desktop cals, set alarms, write in Office using the slide-out keyboard if I want to, draw and paint, read my Tarot cards, (I don’t do games)…. whatever! All this however, on an unfortunately small screen.

    New phones ROCK for real estate!
    I got the DHD because it was the biggest one I could find at the time!
    I was on the verge of learning how to create Android apps myself!
    Shall I persevere, or give it up?

  • Marc Huggard

    Dude, you stopped me from going insane and for that I genuinely and whole-heartedly thank you. This worked…to a degree (as I did not know which app was f**king up the phone I pretty much had to scrap all and start again—–but the key word is START….that is SO much more than I could do in my infinite loop it is awesome.

    PS: This is the absolute FIRST message I have EVER left ANYWHERE on the web….thanks again.
    M

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