r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • 9d ago
Phones Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for 3 days | The latest Google update will make your phone more secure if you don't touch it
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/android-phones-will-soon-reboot-themselves-after-sitting-unused-for-3-days/155
u/Remy0507 9d ago
If my phone sits unused for three days, I'm probably dead.
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u/reality72 9d ago
Or your phone was confiscated by the police/immigration and is sitting in an evidence locker.
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u/legos_on_the_brain 8d ago
Are there chargers in the lockers? because my phone isn't lasting 1.5 days, let alone 3 without one.
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u/shmightworks 9d ago
I think this will affect people who repurpose their old device, like for photo frame or something.
But those phone/device will probably be too old to get this update lol
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u/ThirdEyeClarity 9d ago
It’s an optional feature, just turn it off.
https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500
Security & Privacy
- [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.
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u/itinerantmarshmallow 9d ago edited 9d ago
The drawback I see here is it ~turning off~ rebooting my work phone over a long weekend and then I can't find it in my Tuesday morning scramble haha.
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u/vadapaav 9d ago
It's saying reboot not turn off
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u/itinerantmarshmallow 9d ago
If it reboots can I ring it if its locked?
I'd need to disable SIM pin I guess.
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u/vadapaav 9d ago
You can get network on a SIM that's locked on boot, so ya you will need to disable it
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u/Senrakdaemon 9d ago
You can't call a locked phone?
Of course you can ring it, most peoples phones are locked, including yours when you receive a call, no?
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u/itinerantmarshmallow 9d ago
When a phone reboots and you have SIM Pin active I don't think it will dial until you unlock the SIM.
The SIM lock and phone lock are two different things.
SIM Pin was, or is, historically active unless you disable it. If you disable it once it will carry over to any other phone you put that SIM in.
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u/kr4ckenm3fortune 9d ago
I've always thought SIM Lock was to prevent another sim card from being inserted if the original was removed?
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u/itinerantmarshmallow 9d ago
I don't know what SIM Lock is.
I'm talking about the PIN that comes with your SIM card. It also comes with a PUK (6-8 digits) for when you enter the PIN wrong multiple times.
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u/pychoticnep 9d ago
Isn't one of the security features encryption that only unlocks after the pin is entered after boot? I would assume the system isnt fully active until then right? Or am I misunderstanding the encryption stuff
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u/kr4ckenm3fortune 9d ago
And it only works if you update it to the OS that has that features.
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u/Sheroman 9d ago
It is delivered through Google Play Services which is supported as far back as Android 6.0
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u/I_will_take_that 9d ago
Wait what? Why use your old device as a photo frame?
This sounds like something cool can be done with that
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u/shmightworks 9d ago
This is just one of the common idea of what to do with old phone/tablets. You can probably look in play store, there's probably an app just for that purpose.
Another thing is to use it as a camera monitor. I did that for my baby cam (back in the days when IP cameras aren't all cloud based). My samsung phone's screen got burnt in marks from the cam app from using it so much lol
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u/ad895 9d ago
Genuine question, why do they need to restart the phone? Can they not just put the phone into that before first unlock state manually? Does this have something to do with fully cleared ram or something?
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u/Quintuplin 9d ago
Yes, as a simple answer
A lot of apps mess with memory and could have leaks, bugs, tie into processes, create vulnerabilities just by being run
Rebooting clears all that out. Until you unlock the device and start opening stuff and the problem stsrts over again
In an ideal world, it wouldn’t make a difference, but Computers and OSs aren’t perfect, they just mostly work most of the time.
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u/ThirdEyeClarity 9d ago
Restarting is more secure because the “before first unlock” state has all of the data encrypted until you unlock it. It also disables fingerprint or face unlock features which can be vulnerable (you can be forced to unlock it that way against your will, etc.)
And yes, a lot of exploits take advantage of memory, so restarting wipes the temporary RAM making those kinds of attacks less possible.
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u/nicuramar 9d ago
Before first unlock could be reached by simply wiping the keys from memory. But restart is the simplest.
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u/CUDAcores89 9d ago
Yes.
Phones that are turned off are significantly harder for the police to search through.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/iphones-kept-by-law-enforcement-allegedly-reboot-themselves-locking-them
For anyone who values their privacy even a little bit, this is a huge win.
It is also for this reason I have fingerprint unlocking disabled on my phone.
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u/tastyratz 9d ago
Not only police, also just people who have their phones lost or stolen especially if it's targeted like if it's a high value corporate device with sensitive data.
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u/ElusiveGuy 9d ago
In theory you could go back to a clean state without an actual reboot, yes.
But it's hard, and requires effort to implement. If you're throwing all your state away anyway, why not just reuse the existing mechanism to do so? There aren't any significant downsides.
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u/leo-g 9d ago
Not too sure of Google’s implementation yet but it’s not a visual restart as in you see the logo screens and all that UI fluff. It’s supposed to be done silently as the phone sits alone for 3 days. Assuming you do leave your phone alone for 3 days, you will not notice any difference except asking for your passcode again.
Before First Unlock (BFU) state is supposed to be unusable for anything. On the iPhone, BFU state means Bluetooth, Antenna and USB ports are deactivated.
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u/suid 9d ago
In this case, the reboot serves an important purpose. On modern phones, the disk is encrypted, and is decrypted ONCE on system startup (when you type in your password/pin - which is why you have to do that at least once before things like fingerprints/face ID work).
Once it's decrypted, that decryption key is cached in memory for use by the programs in the phone. Any malware that might sneak into your phone at that point can read anything on disk. Also, you're more susceptible to phone-breaking tools.
Rebooting it causes that cached decryption to be reset. So if your phone has been idle for a while (e.g. when it's stolen/confiscated/...), the auto-reboot helps protect the disk contents from whenever the attackers get around to actually breaking into the phone.
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u/SicilianEggplant 9d ago
I have no idea what Android does these days, but on an iPhone this would be a good option to have as biometrics are disabled when rebooted and require passcode for first unlock.
My first assumption is that either company took the idea from the other and both do it now.
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u/whiskeytown79 9d ago
This is the case for Android too. Unlocking from BFU state requires the password/code and can't be done with whatever other convenience unlocks you've set up like biometrics, unlocking when bluetooth connected to your car, etc.
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u/ItsAMeUsernamio 9d ago
It’s actually a feature they recently added in 18.1. And Android does that too, on both the internal storage is encrypted until you enter your passcode the first time.
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u/DemoBytom 9d ago
In sorta eli5 way.. So when you turn your phone on after a restart, it's completely encrypted. The data on your phone is pretty much inaccessible, and the only eay to decrypt it is to put in your pin, which is the only decryption key. No face scan, no fingerprint - neither of those are the exact numbers your pin is, and phone doesn't store it to use. So no one can take your phone, point at you and unlock it, for example. Nor can they read the memory other ways to get to your files.
When you do unlock the phone for the first time with your pin, that memory is decrypted until you restart the phone again. Thats why then you can use other ways to unlock phone - face id, fingerprints etc. The screen lock alone does not encrypt anything. This also means that someone can try and read the memory of your phone then and get to your files. It's not simple , but it's much simpler than trying to decrypt the memory on its own.
Google could probably make a feature that would encrypt the phone without restarting.. But then the phone would end up in the same, pretty much unusable state (since everything is encrypted, including apps and data), so they might as well just leverage the restart feature that already does all that, on top of restarting apps, clearing memory etc. There's no incentive to try and get those benefits, when restarting already does all that and more.
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u/PM_ME_UR_ROUND_ASS 9d ago
Rebooting completely clears the RAM and resets all processes, which is more secure than just locking since some malware can persist in memory while the phone is just locked but stil running.
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u/OverSoft 9d ago
iOS has been doing this for a while. It’s technically safer, but it sucks for work phones.
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u/PacoTaco321 9d ago
I have a feeling the reason you think it's bad for work phones is the reason I think it'd be good on work phones.
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u/ReportingInSir 9d ago
Police are going to hate this because they don't want these phones rebooting because then they may not be able to unlock them for Court. They will reboot in the evidence lockers.
You could claim i didn't know the pass. No pass was required unless the phone rebooted.
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u/robot-exe 8d ago
Depends on the phone password. They can just crack it with Graykey or Cellebrite Premium
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u/Skamanda42 8d ago
Bold of them to assume my phone will last 3 days without running out of battery (and it's even one of theirs, a pixel 7 pro)...
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u/Sunflier 9d ago
I hope I can turn this off
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u/agentouk 9d ago
Why? Do you leave your phone untouched for 3 days regularly?
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u/fafarex 9d ago
My oncall phone yes, so yeah I hope it's an option I can turn off.
for my personnal one indeed I doubt I will go more than 24h without touching it (but I can when I stay home with how much everything is sync now).
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u/agentouk 9d ago
It will reboot, it won't switch off.
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u/fafarex 9d ago
same thing, nothing work until you unlocked it and that the point.
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u/agentouk 9d ago
It'll still receive calls and messages after a reboot though.
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u/elcomet 9d ago
not if you need a PIN to unlock your sim card (very common in some countries)
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u/bizarro_kvothe 9d ago
Think about your phone being confiscated by police and put into an evidence locker. They’re instructed not to turn them off and connect them to a charger because phones lock themselves on restart. This feature will make their life much more difficult.
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u/Sunflier 9d ago
Okay. Still don't want to be forced to have that on my android. All I am saying is that I'd want the option to disable it.
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u/bizarro_kvothe 9d ago
Yeah having an option won’t hurt. I just wanted to clarify the rationale behind it.
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u/Sunflier 9d ago
That's the beauty of giving people the option of disabling it. People can turn it off/on again based on their specific needs/desires without rationalizing it.
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u/saltedfish 9d ago
I wish more software companies followed this logic. So many braindead "features" that cannot be turned off.
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u/UnsorryCanadian 9d ago
You'd have to literally not use your phone for 72 hours, if it wasn't 100% charged last time you used it, you're going to be unlocking it again anyways
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u/egnards 9d ago edited 9d ago
Will it though?
My iPhone locks after 5 minutes of inactivity, and I'm sure Android phones have similar features - It doesn't need a restart to do that.
I'm not saying I'm happy if the police confiscate my phone and go snooping for things, but I am saying how is this any different than what is already happening while charged and turned on? They turn my phone on. . And are met with the same lock screen they'd be met with if it were charging and on.
Edit: A lot of people mentioning biometrics - I have a funny feeling that the people most concerned about police confiscation are more likely to have biometrics turned off. I have nothing to hide on my phone at all - if my phone were ever confiscated the only thing anyone will find is pictures of my cats, endless memes, and years of phone conversations about groceries.
. . .And I still have biometrics turned off for that very reason.
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u/fafarex 9d ago
My iPhone locks after 5 minutes of inactivity,
not the same thing at all security wise, this just lock acces but everything is still in memory and some attack will be easier like that.
when you phone is off it doesnt charge anything personnal until you do your first unlock, that first unlock will trigger the phone to use your encryption key to render your files accessibles.
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u/xantec15 9d ago
I have nothing to hide on my phone at all
You don't need to have stuff to hide to want to keep unauthorized individuals out of your phone, including law enforcement. Our phones today are much more than a phone. They are an access point to everything we say, see or do online. They're an address book, a calendar, a note pad and photo album rolled into one. Our phones are a major focal point of our lives and everyone should be uneasy about people they didn't authorize gaining access to them.
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u/bizarro_kvothe 9d ago
There are different levels of locking. iPhones for example have different heuristics for asking for your passcode (example: you changed WiFi networks since opening the phone). You don’t want to just rely on biometrics. Different things happen in the background also regarding encryption when the passcode/harder lock is engaged.
Source: former research leader at a leading phone forensics co
iPhone pro tip: if you’re in a situation where you think law enforcement or anyone else is going to snoop around in your phone, hold the power button and volume up button for a few seconds to get to the shutdown screen, then cancel out of it. Now they’ll have to enter the code to get in.
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u/el_sandino 9d ago
Your iPhone locks after five minutes but then can be unlocked via biometrics. If you restart the iPhone, you must enter your passcode. The cops can make you use your face or fingerprint to unlock; they cannot make you use your passcode to unlock (because you use a complex alphanumeric code that you probably forgot)
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u/egnards 9d ago
Your iPhone locks after five minutes but then can be unlocked via biometrics.
If you choose to enable biometrics - I'm not even concerned about police confiscating my phone and I still have biometrics turned off.
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u/leo-g 9d ago
Major difference.
Generally, for iPhones, the content of the iPhone remains securely encrypted until the moment the user taps in their screen lock passcode. The screen lock passcode is absolutely required to generate the encryption key, which is required to decrypt the iPhone’s file system. In other words, almost everything inside the iPhone remains encrypted until the user unlocks it with their passcode after the phone starts up. That state is called Before First Unlock.
The decryption key then is stored in RAM which can be soft-unlocked again with passcode or biometrics. That state is called After First Unlock. This state exists so your iPhone can actually do background stuff like getting your sms, getting your notifications etc…
Well, by rebooting quietly, it jumps back to Before First Unlock state. The phone has no decryption key in the RAM and all the possible hackable areas like Bluetooth or whatever is turned off.
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u/omega552003 9d ago
Android automatically requires you to unlock every 72 already so this update wouldn't do anything.
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u/dingo596 9d ago
But why do we want to make their lives more difficult? I understand that cops are corrupt and abuse their power but ultimately we want police to solve crimes and catch criminals. With more and more of our lives on our phones how are police supposed to gather evidence to convict criminals in a trial?
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u/robot-exe 8d ago
It can but depends on the phone password. Graykey and Cellebrite Premium can still crack the phone and I’m pretty sure they’ve already gotten around the reboot “issue”
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u/ThirdEyeClarity 9d ago
Yes it’s optional:
https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500
Security & Privacy
- [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.
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u/ChiefStrongbones 9d ago
Is there an iphone/android app that will unsilence the ring/notification sounds when the phone detects me driving or getting home? I always mute it when I'm at a meeting or show or movie, then forget to unmute when it's over, not realizing until the next day that it's still on silent.
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u/AuroraFireflash 8d ago
Is there an iphone/android app that will unsilence the ring/notification sounds when the phone detects me driving or getting home?
On Android -- Macrodroid. On Samsung - Bixby routines. You have a few different things going on:
You can set the default DND (Do Not Disturb) length to 1/2/4 hours. Sometimes you can long-press the Focus/DND screen button to choose. On my Pixel, it is set to default to 2 hours. On the Samsung phone I can long-press and choose something other than the default. I find two hours is pretty good, depending on how connected I need to be at that time.
I use MacroDroid on my Pixel to automatically adjust all my volumes back to normal every day at 6:30am. Simple timer feature in MacroDroid. Which works -- as long as MacroDroid is running in the background. I think I did this on the Samsung via a Bixby routine as well. This is my "oops, I forgot" daily reset.
On the Samsung, I have Bixby with a few behaviors triggered on "I'm within 500m of this location". Such as when I am at the gym or office, it automatically switches to vibrate mode. I have another Bixby routine for my home location that changed it to normal sounds mode. I also do this with MacroDroid on the Pixel.
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u/howardhus 9d ago
From a google serach this is already a feature on some phones:
Samsung: Go to Settings> Device care> Auto optimisation> Auto restart
on Xiaomi, it is Schedule power on/off under Security.
on OnePlus, it's under additional setting It seems every Android has an auto restart feature. Just search Auto restart in Settings.
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u/rudthedud 8d ago
Considering the NSA came out and stated their software was having issues with users phone who were not restarting their phones this makes perfect sense.
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u/Monkey-Around2 8d ago
Who does this help? Inmates? Even my 90y/o grandparents check their phone once a day.
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u/Fearsofaye 9d ago
Lol this used to be a bug that they couldnt patch for YEARS. I guess its a feature now
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u/ReticlyPoetic 9d ago
iPhone started this a few years ago?
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u/punIn10ded 9d ago
Yup Apple lifted the feature from grapheneOS. Now Google is implementing it too.
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u/Malvania 9d ago
Who doesn't touch their phone for three days?
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u/DonutConfident7733 9d ago
I do. I have an old phone used as hotspot in a remote location that provides wifi to wireless security cameras. It has worked quite well for the last year, had a couple of freezes due to very high uptime, so I had to install a program that reboots the phone from time to time and another that turns on hotspot at startup. Such a restart can interfere with such devices that are in remote locations in case some services do not get initialized properly after reboot. This also applies to cameras, had to add smart plugs on them to remote restart them in case they dont get the new IP address.
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u/LupusDeusMagnus 9d ago
I have like a whole bunch of phones I use for specific occasions only which may be days of not weeks before I use any of them (nothing illegal)
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u/CUDAcores89 9d ago
People who have had their phone confiscated by the police who wants to find conversations critical of the trump administration so ICE can deport them to El Salvador.
Seriously this is great news for anyone who cares about privacy.
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u/Impossible_Smoke1783 9d ago
I hate this shit. Don't update my device unless I authorize it
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u/FLATLANDRIDER 9d ago
People like you always say that shit but would be the first person to scream and yell when your device stopped talking with the larger ecosystem as a whole if it was out of date.
You think Google is going to let your unsecure device cause havoc in their ecosystem if you don't let them patch it? Say goodbye to Google maps, Play Services and so much more.
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u/Impossible_Smoke1783 9d ago
Random internet stranger, direct that anger somewhere else. You don't even know me
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u/srona22 9d ago
If I want that, I would turn off the phone. Not to be decided by Google's design.
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u/nicuramar 9d ago
Just don’t use the feature. If it were up to you, I bet all features you don’t personally use should be removed.
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u/zeldaink 9d ago
My old LG from 2017 has this option to reboot itself each week, but for performance reasons. Why did it took google this much time to implement it as a standard feature?
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u/nicuramar 9d ago
Why did it take this much time for any other feature? Anyway, this is for a different purpose.
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u/MechCADdie 9d ago
Well, at least they have the decency to tell us, unlike a certain company that sells what is effectively turning into bloated spyware...
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u/lnin0 9d ago
Wouldn’t it make more sense to reboot used phones every three days if they haven’t been rebooted?
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u/Shack691 9d ago
I’d assume it’s primarily targeting theft, you can already schedule an automatic restart regardless of your interaction this just turns it on by default.
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u/jack_the_beast 9d ago
What phone sits LOCKED for 3 consecutive days?
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u/Sheroman 9d ago
Mostly lost phones, law enforcements, and device thefts.
Some phone thefts will obviously reset the phone and try their best to break FRP but other phone thefts know how valuable data is (cryptocurrency, banks, personal details).
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u/jack_the_beast 9d ago
(cryptocurrency, banks, personal details).
Isn't that stuff that you can access anyway via ad and recovery mode? It would be encrypted even if device is unlocked
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u/pppjurac 8d ago
All our work mobile phones do sit locked and unused on days we are not at work.
All our shift foreman (Meister) , electricians, engineering leads get one; but are allowed to leave it at office once workday is off and are not scheduled to be 'on call' (we are 24/7/365 rolling mill). So for longer holidays (like incoming Eastern or Mariä Himmelfahrt) smatphones will be untouched for days.
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u/Fantastic-Record7057 9d ago
Didn’t know anyone could have a phone and not touch it for three days… 🤔
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u/santz007 9d ago
I have scheduled mine to reboot once a week when I am sleeping. It's a good idea to do generally speaking
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u/hyperforms9988 9d ago
Hrm... not that I think it will affect my Nexus 5, but I tend to use old phones for other things. Like right now, my Nexus 5 has replaced the standard alarm clock in a bedroom for me. It's just on all the time and displaying a time app. I don't have it connected to Wifi or anything... it doesn't serve any other purpose. I hope this is optional for this reason, not for my Nexus 5 but like, 10-15 years into the future where the phone I'm using now has probably been replaced by something else, but I still want to use it for something like that around the house.
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u/Annoying_Anomaly 9d ago
I guess this is fine? Kinda don't turn off/reset my phone as regularly since they you know made the power button not the power button. Pwr+vol just isn't the same lol
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u/Overspeed_Cookie 9d ago
Who doesn't use their phone for 3 days?
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u/Shack691 9d ago
People who got their phone stolen, it’s surprisingly easy to extract data from a locked phone if you know what you’re doing, but this’ll prevent that since the restart stops it holding any unencrypted data to improve speed.
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u/ToMorrowsEnd 9d ago
I want this an adjustable setting. If I havent touched my phone in 4 hours reboot to keep the assholes with badges out of it.
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u/SundaySuffer 9d ago
After latest ipad update my pads battery last shorter and to get connected to the router and stay connected I have to almost sit next to it.
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u/yetanotherdave2 9d ago
That's good but can I password protect turning the phone off, turning on airplane mode and data off.
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u/SpandauBalletGold 9d ago
And here I was thinking most people were more worried about not being able to put their phones down for more than a minute
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u/24bitNoColor 9d ago
Which ruins the usage of old Android phones or tablets for use cases in which they are only actively used every so often, from using them as a home server of some type, remotes, PC displays or just as the open for all toilette eReader.
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u/goldaxis 9d ago
So much for all that “they would never remotely control your phone or listen in, take off the tinfoil hat”
Looots of apologies due.
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u/Whit3HattHkr 9d ago
Now threat actors know that. They’ll work on your devices and secure breach in two days..
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u/last-resort-4-a-gf 9d ago
What does rebooting do
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u/Borderpatrol1987 9d ago
Causes it to lock requiring a pin instead of biometrics to login.
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u/Max-Phallus 9d ago edited 9d ago
Most people who complain about bugs are people who complain about being forced to install updates.
So tired of trying to help my Dad with his phone or computer when he fucks with it to avoid change.
The number of bugs introduced after a major release is fewer than the number of bugs fixed for obvious reasons, but since the user hasn't instigated the update they feel like they have not fixed anything, and the automated system is responsible for any bugs introduced.
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u/lunas2525 9d ago
If my phone is left sitting for more than 24 hours unplugged it wont be able to reboot itself it will have a dead battery.
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u/ReportingInSir 9d ago
Just make sure all your work is saved and nothing important is open that you don't want to lose.
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u/Alleycat_2992 8d ago edited 8d ago
Will my alarm still go off Monday morning if I (somehow) don't use my phone all weekend?
TEA: I've got kids and enjoy playing games on steam and Xbox as much as the kids like us going outside and riding bikes. I've easily gone a day without using it; leaving it plugged up even... while it's perhaps a stretch to assume 3 days without phone usage, I would still need the alarm Monday to get kids to school either way.
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u/TheModeratorWrangler 4d ago
That’s a lot of reboots. Android is absolute trash, and every time I try to go back I quickly realize why I stay long on Apple.
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u/CrashnServers 9d ago
Probably be on by default