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Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days
- chmod775 2y agoI don't touch my phone for days at a time. It's just sitting there on my desk most days. Not sure I'm too happy about this...
- m-p-3 2y agouhh, that's going to disrupt Briar Mailbox, which relies on an Android device to act as an always-on node. I really hope there is a way to toggle this. https://briarproject.org/download-briar-mailbox/ https://briarproject.org/download-briar-mailbox/
- subscribed 2y agoIf you need to use Briar Mailbox, you're likely better off with GrapheneOS where this feature can be turned off. It works there better anyway, because it's integrated with the OS, and not just one privileged service.
- m-p-3 2y agoTo be honest, I kinda hope they'll offer it as a Linux service at some point, not super thrilled at running an old Android device as a server.
- yellowapple 2y agoCan I configure this? In some cases I'd want the auto-reboot to be more aggressive (for example: after 3 hours). In other cases I'd want to disable the auto-reboot entirely.
- hnburnsy 2y agoSo the phone will reboot it self, but... 1) There is no developer accessible API to allow app developers to create an app to allow me to script power options (example, as an end user I want to script a restart or shut down my phone nightly). 2) Asking Google Assistant will not restart or shut down the phone. 3) Apple and Android have made it harder to shut down the phone, requiring double key press kung fu to even bring up the power menu.
- gxs 2y agoFWIW on iPhone you can just create a shortcut to restart the phone One click for me and it restarts fyi
- AnonC 2y agoOne click where? Have you mapped it to the Action button on the newer phone models? Or do you launch the shortcut by tapping somewhere (widget on Control Center or elsewhere)?
- gxs 2y agoJust create a shortcut and select an icon It appears as an “app” like any other Open it, will ask you to confirm, hit yes and it will restart
- panny 2y agoWhy would it reboot instead of just power off?
- subscribed 2y agoSo you could still answer a phone call or have your phone reachable for "find my phone".
- iggldiggl 2y agoDoesn't work if the SIM is pin-locked, too, though.
- greyjoyduck 2y agoMy samsung rebooting in the middle of writing this comment
- nubinetwork 2y agoAndroid theft protection already locks my phone constantly, usually because I pick up my phone before unlocking it...
- userbinator 2y agoMore "security" bullshit when all they want to do is secure their control over us. Not falling for it anymore. Fuck Google and the rest of Big Tech.
- thund 2y agoWhat if just while that occurs I need to make or receive an emergency call? Sometimes it feels like tech is going backwards. Rather than rebooting, just develop a proper method to unload/uncache, without making a device useless while that happens. Or use that multicore arch to swap the “dirty” instance with a clean one, in realtime.
- erelong 2y agoI was wondering about this too, or even benign annoying situations like you were doing research and forgot it was going to reboot on schedule and now you lose your train of thought
- Suppafly 2y agoMine randomly reboots semi-periodically already, even when it hasn't been shown as having downloaded an update. That said, I think this is a fairly good idea, although with the encryption stuff they do, this will cause people who rarely use their phones to miss calls and alarms.
- morpheuskafka 2y agoIt would be easy to store alarms in an unencrypted partition or even EEPROM as they take no space. Calls is a harder problem, although in principle if the SIM doesn’t have a PIN, you should have everything you need.
- 28304283409234 2y agoExcept that after a reboot of my Android phone, it still asks confirmation to activate my SIM (even though it has no PIN).
- morepork 2y agoProbably vendor specific whether it works, but alarms and calls should still work before unlocking/decrypting in "direct boot" mode
- kernal 2y agoSamsung phones have had this feature for years. But it’s not what you think. Samsung phones gave you the option to reboot at various intervals because their phones would slow down over time and their solution was to allow the user to schedule a reboot. Now it’s.a security feature.
- erelong 2y agosounds good as opt-in configurable feature, but like it could have unforeseen consequences if forced on all users?
- est 2y agoOne thing to consider is for SIM with a PIN lock, after reboot there won't be any signal unless you input the PIN everytime.
- danielEM 2y agoGoogle saying they gonna reboot my phone for my safety - not suspicious at all ;)
- suddenexample 2y agoThis feature is optional: https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500#:~:text=%5BPhone%5D%20Enables%20a%20future%20optional%20security%20feature%2C%20which%20will%20automatically%20restart%20your%20device%20if%20locked%20for%203%20consecutive%20days. https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1434...
- rvba 2y agoOptional so far. In 6 months will be mandatory
- ant6n 2y agoReminds me of ms windows. Except it reboots, no matter what’s running - for example if ms office is open with some unsaved changes.
- rvba 2y agoAnother shitty idea that makes life harder: If you are in a hospital- your phone will reboot to pin level. So you need to unlcok it few times and wait 3 minutes before it becomes reactive. Then all your alarms will not work. They add crap like this, yet the stock calendar app needs a separate appto play music to warn you. This of course breaksafter a reboot.. My grandma has a second phone as backup - it will constantly reboot and will never be ready to be used the time it is needed - as a backup. Since it will keep rebooting and requiring a pin. Who comes up with those anti user ideas? That we will probably be unable to turn off (or the option to turn off will disappear after few months). Also old people will not know how to turn it off
- alex_suzuki 2y agoI imagine this is going to disrupt some Continous Integration setups that have fixed testing phones.
- roflmaostc 2y agoBut it says "unused"? If it's used for CI it shouldn't break.
- 867-5309 2y ago"unused" firstly how about fixing software which forces 'inactive hours' yet reboots even when cpu is at 100% utilisation, and software which dims or locks a mobile screen during video playback, and soft/hardware which doesn't respect user-supplied suspend/standby timeouts in their power plans, and ....
- SwayamDas 2y agoThis is better actually, it will prevent bot farming or screen enabled activity that are in set and forget mode.
- t1234s 2y agoIs it even possible to recover data in BFU state without knowing the pin?
- doright 2y agoI use microG instead of Google Play Services (for YouTube Vanced) so I wonder if they will implement an equivalent feature.
- kevincox 2y agoYeah, this should be an OS feature, not a feature in a proprietary framework.
- frozenlettuce 2y agoBad idea, as some people use old Android phones as IOT devices
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jfkimmes 2y agoThis is a Google Play Services update. For GrapheneOS users without GApps wondering: A similar feature is already built-in: https://grapheneos.org/features#auto-reboot https://grapheneos.org/features#auto-reboot
- NotPractical 2y agoTypical lazy Ars reporting. The feature originates from GrapheneOS, not iOS.
- kernal 2y agoNo, the feature first appeared on Samsung phones to fix their bloat / slowdown issues. Now it’s suddenly a security feature.
- morpheuskafka 2y agoThat’s weird. I wouldn’t expect Play Services to handle a system function like rebooting unrelated to any Google services.
- ffpip 2y agoPlay services is how Google delivers many Android updates now so that all users can get security updates without waiting for the device vendor to publish it for each device.
- usr1106 2y agoNo. Play Services is Google's way to make Android closed source. Many new features don't get implemented in Android, but Play Services. Many apps don't work (correctly) without Play Services.
- surajrmal 2y agoBeing closed source is not the goal. Update speed, consistency across the ecosystem, and feature development speed are key reasons things are implemented via play services. Also dependency on google services, but that's not relevant here. AOSP is greatly improving in its ability to tackle these things, so the choice to implement things in play services won't be as compelling as it is today for things not ultimately tied to Google.
- gumbojuice 2y agoIt's not great news for my old phone used for wifi at our guesthouse (let's a few security cams and our smart lock get online)
- 1832 2y agoAlso bad news for my megayacht (use's an old android phone to monitor location and detect movement)
- wizzwizz4 2y agoYou should be able to switch this off, if you notice it being enabled, so (now you know about it) it should be a one-time downtime.
- devrandoom 2y agoI skimmed through the docs, couldn't see anything about soaking disabling it.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoIt's right there in the Google System Release Notes. Quoting https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500?hl=en https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/1434... : --- ### Google Play services v25.14 (2025-04-14) #### Security & Privacy • [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.
- devrandoom 2y agoWow I'm blind. Thanks and apologies.
- rixed 2y agoSame here, using several old androids as hotspots here and there. They stopped receiving updates long ago though, so I'm not worried.
- imcritic 2y agoIsn't this stupid? Why not flush something properly in the RAM instead to wipe the "cached" secrets? A full restart feels like an overkill.
- subscribed 2y agoIt also terminates almost all malware and makes sure the device is encrypted and the keys cannot be extracted.
- davikr 2y agoThe system is provably fully encrypted after a restart.
- scarface_74 2y agoIt’s not just the RAM. Android devices and iOS devices are not that secure after first unlock (AFU). https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-states/ https://blogs.dsu.edu/digforce/2023/08/23/bfu-and-afu-lock-s...
- MattPalmer1086 2y agoNot really. Restart - simple with known and predictable effects, data no longer accessible, all secrets flushed no matter where they were or cached. Turn off disk encryption, suspend all running services, overwrite all secrets in the O/S wherever they are, and then restore all that on entering password. Probably can't do anything about secrets cached by actual apps. Complex, hard to maintain and probably buggy.
- crote 2y agoThat "something" is at least the entire userspace, so any attempt at doing so ends up being UX-equivalent to a full restart - while having a decent chance of leaving unintended trace data lying around in memory. A full restart guarantees that everything will be wiped.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- udev4096 2y agoThey stole the idea from GrapheneOS and shipped a barely half-baked version with hardcoded time. GrapheneOS has configurable time for it since years
- surajrmal 2y agoAs the article alludes to, Apple recently shipped the same policy to iOS so this is likely just following the precedent from them. Android developers don't pay attention to community forks.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- mcraiha 2y agoCan you set the time to one minute?
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y agoWhy would you want it to auto-reboot after one minute? The minimum on GrapheneOS is 10 min and the maximum is 72 hours. It can also be disabled.
- devrandoom 2y agoNot against it, but I'm genuinely curious what the use case would be for that?
- amelius 2y agoI guess as a prank, just like setting the language to Chinese for English speakers.
- 67593874748 2y agoCould be useful in a scenario where you won't be using your phone often and really want to maximize battery life.
- Beijinger 2y agoPff. Windows does this since decades. No? I vaguely remember this nag screens after unauthorized updates.
- booleandilemma 2y agoI just want software that will do nothing user-observable without me explicitly asking it to. No pop-ups, no suggestions, no automatic anything. I don't know if it'll take a fancy buzzword or what. Unobtrusive software? Silent Software?
- MiddleEndian 2y agoI've mused about writing a distribution license where every type of notification and update can be disabled, and any modification must follow the same license. STFU (BSD equivalent) and STFU-O (GPL equivalent) No LGPL equivalent because I would want even software that uses STFU-* licensed code as a library to follow the STFU-* license. Just have to explicitly define what counts as a notification lol
- pabs3 2y agoRespectful software.
- mystified5016 2y agoGood software
- kranke155 2y agoNot shit software
- layer8 2y agoInert software. Inertware?
- bobsmooth 2y agoThis is a terrible idea for an internet connected device.
- TheBicPen 2y agoNo notifications? Depends on what your definition of "asking it" is, but having to explicitly do an action to check for notifications and even phone calls seems counter-productive for a phone.
- Bender 2y agoNot bad. If I could make a feature request it would be something like, After 3 days of being idle: - [ ] Reboot - [ ] Power Off - [X] WIPE triple opt-in Maybe there is a custom phone OS for this that makes the phone act more ephemeral and network boot off my self hosted iPXE/immich server? A dumb smart phone so to speak. An ephemeral diskless phone.
- mapkkk 2y agoI've been fantasizing about building an iPXE netbooting phone for a while now, glad to see that I'm not the only one. Mine was sparked by seeing some journalists in my country getting arrested recently. I think it should be doable _technically_, but I think getting the mobile radios working before the OS boots would be challenging.
- LinuxBender 2y agoIf the phone can boot off a thumb-drive then people could have a keychain thumb-drive that serves the sole purpose of a minimal OS that can iPXE, boot the real OS and pull down the users contacts, apps, etc... maybe?
- gf000 2y agoWithout a verified boot chain, security would be greatly compromised. Like I could just grab your thumb drive, and put a new system on there that looks the same, and steals your password.
- dist-epoch 2y agoThe WIPE is doable with a custom "management app", which has the permission to wipe the phone. Maybe such a thing already exists.
- kccqzy 2y agoA long long time ago, adding Gmail to your phone via the Exchange protocol over m.google.com gives Google the ability to wipe your phone remotely, including iPhones as well. No management profile needed.
- Aeolun 2y agoWait, why is this presented as a good thing? Why would I want my phone to auto reboot without my intervention? Never mind that it’ll never make three days on a single charge even if I don’t touch it.
- alistairSH 2y agoIt’s pretty well spelled out in the article… The BFU state is more secure than AFU.
- WD-42 2y agoJust be glad it’s not windows, which does it every 3 hours.
- recursive 2y agoTopical joke 25 years ago
- scarface_74 2y agoSays someone who has never had to deal with corporate installed malware - ie MDM software.
- recursive 2y agoYou're not wrong. Seems hard to blame on MS though.
- scarface_74 2y agoMaybe? Could Microsoft have a layer of third party customization between user space and kernel where MDM lives without crashing the operating system like CrowdStrike did?
- recursive 2y ago
- 627467 2y agoI'm surprised this is something taken seriously only now by stock android. Isn't it known universally that AFU devices are insecure? What's the point of adding strict password policies, biometrics etc, if data from a stolen phone can be (relatively) trivially be exfiltrated unencrypted? Samsung's have had some feature that lets you set days of the week for the phone to restart (IME during early morning hours) automatically. It's not perfect but it's something. iOS seems to have some unclear logic to either restart or re-request password (not biometrics). This should be standard
- kccqzy 2y agoBecause they protect against different actors. A stolen phone? The thief likely just wants to strip your phone down to parts and sell the parts if there is a passcode. If there isn't anything, perhaps the thief would wipe it and sell it whole as a second hand device. Only law enforcement cares about the difference between the AFU state and BFU state.
- jonathanstrange 2y agoThanks, No. I'd like to opt out of this.
- greatgib 2y agoIt's good to have an option like that, even being a default, but there definitively need a switch to disable that if it is your own will. It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in jail until he would comply with the judge order to unlock his device.
- epolanski 2y agoStories about airport security and officers demanding access your phone is one of the reasons I will never come to the US. An (Italian) friend of mine was stuck in Newark for 8 hours after he refused access to his phone, dragged in some room and questioned for hours along his wife while split from him own kids, even though he later gave them the password (he initially said no because he thought it was out of the line, he had nothing to hide). He left livid for Italy 16 hours later despite being free to go on with his vacation. Land of the free my ass.
- SoftTalker 2y agoOk, but try refusing the requests of border authorities in any country and see how far you get before you find yourself escorted to a back room.
- amelius 2y agoCan't it run two OSes, so the booting becomes instantaneous? (Like swapping graphics buffers, but now with the entire OS)
- edelbitter 2y agoAndroid ships a feature called bootchart which you can use to prove that most of the time your phone spends booting.. it is actually far from bottlenecked on storage or compute - bugs to be fixed; not worked around with even more complexity. Heck, some phones do not even stop playing their vendors fancy animated logo when they are finished before the animation is.
- surajrmal 2y agoDoes it take into consideration thermal and power? Doing too much too quickly can be bad for both, so sometimes it's worthwhile to go slower.
- fguerraz 2y agoHow about instead of patching up our societies with technology we vote for the right people / laws for once?
- beeflet 2y agoThat plan, if implemented, may last as short as 1 election cycle. All political progress will inevitably be undone. In contrast, technological change will forever alter the balance of power. What we should be asking is "Instead of patching society with political solutions, how about we solve fundamental problems permanently with technology?".
- scarface_74 2y agoYou don’t vote for the police or the three letter agencies and elected officials have little power over people with guns. Yes I know both on the the state level the police are suppose to be under the command of the civil government. But no elected official wants to get on the wrong side of the police unions. Besides most people support the police no matter what. Police know not to abuse their powers against Whites. https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-barrier-to-shield-black-protesters-from-louisville-metro-police/ https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-...
- tehjoker 2y agoIf you vote for the wrong people (i.e. people that want a more humane society), the billionaires will simply coup the government. Remember: they own the things that keep society running, so they have real power. We run the things that they own, so we also have power when combined together.
- recursive 2y agoHow about both?
- homebrewer 2y agoThis won't help those of us living in countries where "elected" officials elect themselves. We haven't had a single honest election in decades (and probably won't ever have one), so measures like this are better than nothing.
- wiseowise 2y ago> This actually caused some annoyance among law enforcement officials who believed they had suspects' phones stored in a readable state, only to find they were rebooting and becoming harder to access due to this feature. Lmao. > The early sluggishness of Android system updates prompted Google to begin moving parts of the OS to Google Play Services. This collection of background services and libraries can be updated by Google automatically in the background as long as your phone is certified for Google services (which almost all are). That's why the inactivity reboot will just show up on your phone in the coming weeks with no notification. There are definitely reasons to be wary of the control Google has over Android with elements like Play Services, but it does pay off when the company can enhance everyone's security without delay. All the more reasons to move to AOSP forks.
- 67593874748 2y agoGoogle locking features behind the closed source, proprietary Play Services is "more reason to move to AOSP"?
- graypegg 2y ago> ...the new Play Services will limit that exposure to three days, even if it's plugged in. This will be fun to track down after a long weekend in embedded devices once this android patch number is old enough to be baked into crappy payment terminals and mall kiosks. Probably overall a good thing though.
- tripdout 2y agoI don't think those would be likely to have Play Services, though.
- rixed 2y ago« This actually caused some annoyance among law enforcement officials who believed they had suspects' phones stored in a readable state, only to find they were rebooting and becoming harder to access due to this feature. » Wouldn't the phones run out of battery after a few days anyway? Or do they keep them plugged in?
- aftbit 2y agoThey keep them plugged in
- FeistySkink 2y agoHow is this going to work with SIM cards that need a PIN? I'll be just unreachable until I notice the reboot?
- vultour 2y agoI don't remember the PIN to my work SIM card. Can't wait to lose my work phone halfway through a conference / business trip because I haven't touched it in a while.
- switch007 2y agoLocking the SIM is considered part of the feature on GrapheneOS AIUI
- myself248 2y agoOr if you're primarily reachable by an app that can't launch until AFU, the phone reboots silently and you don't realize it, and you're incommunicado. Some time later, you need to do something on the phone, you unlock it, the app starts up, and a flood of messages pours in. Wow, some of those would've been really useful to receive in a timely fashion! Whoops!
- cubefox 2y agoThe Ars article seems to be inaccurate. Here is what the release notes say: > Security & Privacy > [Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days. So it only "enables" a "future" "optional" feature.
- bobsmooth 2y agoI misread this as reformat and was concerned for a sec. This is a good idea.
- vishnuharidas 2y agoI found that this saves a lot of battery. My old Motorola G5G is now sitting idle, and I had to charge it every 4-5 days. I found that if the phone is restarted and NOT unlocked, it will stay charged for more than 10 days. My best guess is that a screen unlock is required to start many of the OS-level services, which takes up all the battery. If this is true, then the new update will save a lot of battery for those phones that are sitting idle.
- rvba 2y agoWitout the pin u lock of simcard... nobody can call you?
- emrah 2y agoA phone sitting idle is very unusual though, a very edge case
- kshacker 2y agoI have 3 phones, for various reasons. Not SIMs, but 3 devices. The usage is radically different between them. 2 of them are used daily but even there one routinely runs out of battery and other does not dip below 80%. The third one gets used when it gets used :)
- chowells 2y agoEverything except a very minimal core is kept on an encrypted partition. Until the password is provided, most things can't launch.