We've all been there. You're in the midst of something important—writing an urgent e-mail, digging for a specific photo or eyeballs deep in research. But your phone locks up. In a fit of desperation you start mashing your fingers on the screen—to no avail. Lucky for you, this usually a quick fix.
The Basics
Perform these preliminary steps to help get your phone working again. When your phone is operating normally, check some of the causes and solutions to prevent it from happening again.
- Force restart (soft reset) your phone.
- First try holding the power button for 30 seconds. If this does not help, plug your phone into a charger and try again.
- If the above does not work, perform a soft reset by holding both the power button and volume down button for 20 seconds.
- Check for Android updates (if you can). Open Settings, then select System > System Update.
Full Storage
If your phone’s storage is maxing out, this could impact the operating system’s ability to function. Think of it like your sock drawer. You can squish any number of additional pairs of socks in, but eventually your drawer will stop closing. We think you can see where this is going....
- If your phone freezes after you've started using it, check how much storage is being used. Open Settings > Storage > Free up space.
- View each category individually to see what is using the most space.
- Connect to a computer to remove files.
- You'll need to select media (MTP) mode when connected via USB, but if your phone freezes after a short while, this is a quick way to get this data without much interaction on the phone.
The Google Pixel has the option to free up storage automatically when it nears the limit.
This is set by going to Settings > Storage > Free up space > Overflow Icon ⋮ > Settings > Smart Storage.
Outdated Apps
Out of date apps can cause various issues especially due to compatibility with newer versions of android or related applications.
Although app updates usually process automatically, you can manually apply updates from the Google Play Store.
- In the Google Play Store, select the profile icon on the top right.
- Select Manage apps & device.
- From there, click Update All.
Please note this verbiage has changed slightly over the years, but will be in largely the same location.
Heavy Workload
Cell phones don't usually perform the same sorts of tasks as your laptop, but it still has hardware limitations. If the issue only occurs in specific applications, or when combinations of things are open, this may be to blame.
- Close out all running apps by swiping up from the bottom of the screen and tapping Clear all.
- Check to see if system or application updates are processing. These can utilize a high amount of system resources. See if the phone is more responsive once these have finished.
Android Corruption
Solution: Reset your phone
During the course of using your phone, something in the ones and zeroes that makes it run might have been lost, or changed in a way that renders your device unusable. This is commonly a result of a botched update, an app conflicting in functionality, or even a malicious piece of software.
To attempt to correct this, perform a reinstall of the operating system. To do this, you're need to reset your phone.
Since factory resets will completely wipe your phone’s data, make sure you have a backup of your phone before attempting this.
- To perform a factory reset, power off your phone by holding down the power button.
- With the phone powered off, hold the power button. While continuing to hold power, start holding the volume down button.
- You can release it when the screen shows “bootloader”. Navigate using the volume down button until you highlight "Recovery Mode". Use the power button to select
- Press the power button and volume up button at the same time. Navigate using the volume down button to select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset”. Use the power button to select.
- Press volume down to highlight “Yes” and use the power button to select.
- This factory reset process will take some time to complete.
- Finally, restore the backup by logging into your Google account from the Settings app.
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Need help. Pixel watch is frozen
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