When using your Google Pixel 6 or Google Pixel 6 Pro, your smartphone may randomly reboot or turn itself off. You can check out this troubleshooting guide at Seeking Tech to see how you can fix these random restart and shut down issues.
1. The first step we recommend taking is to boot up your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro in Safe Mode.
In order to do so when your phone is turned on, you can take the following steps:
- Press the power and volume up button at the same time.
- You should see a list of options appear on your phone’s screen. Here, you need to tap and hold the Power Off option.
- In the Reboot to safe mode notification, tap OK.
In order to go into safe mode when you phone is turned off, you need to do the following:
- Press the power button to start the boot up process.
- When you see the Google logo, press and hold the volume down button.
- Keep holding the volume down button until the phone boots up in safe mode.
You should see the “Safe mode” words appear on the bottom left corner.
2. If the random restarts and/or shut downs are still occurring even in safe mode then you can skip ahead to step #4.
If using safe mode resolve these issues, then an app, or a combination of apps, may be the cause.
If you think an app is causing the random reboots and shutdowns, then we recommend either updating, closing or deleting apps.
To perform any of these actions, you first need to make sure to reboot your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro in order to exit Safe Mode. You can reboot by pressing the power and volume up button. You then need to tap the Restart option that appear on the screen.
To update apps, you need to take the following steps:
- Tap the Google Play Store app.
- Tap you profile picture on the top right of the screen.
- In your profile menu, select Manage apps & device.
- Finally, tap the Update all option under Updates available.
To close an app, you can do the following:
- Tap the Settings app. If you don’t have the Settings app on the Home Screen, you can swipe upwards from an empty space to see a list of apps you have currently installed on the phone. You should find the Settings app there.
- Next, tap Apps.
- In the Apps menu, tap See all apps.
- Select an app from the All apps list.
- In the App info menu, tap Force stop.
To delete an app, you can take the following steps:
- Open the Settings app.
- Inside the Settings app, tap Apps.
- Inside Apps, tap See all apps.
- In the All apps menu, you should see a list of apps you have currently installed.
- Tap the app you want to delete.
- Inside the App info menu, tap Uninstall.
After updating, closing or deleting an app or multiple apps, test out your smartphone to see if it still randomly reboots or shuts down.
3. You can also try clearing out the internal storage of your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro. If you are using more than 90% of the storage, then that may be causing the random resets and shut downs.
To check how much storage you are using, you can take the following steps:
- Open the Settings app.
- In the Settings app, you should see Storage. Underneath Storage, you will find the percentage of the internal storage being used.
- If the percentage is over 90%, then you should tap Storage.
- In the Storage menu, you should find a list of files that can be deleted in order to free up space on the internal storage of your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro.
4. Furthermore, you can try updating the Android firmware by doing the following:
- Tap the Settings app.
- Inside Settings, tap System.
- Inside System, tap System update.
- In the next screen, tap Check for update. If there is a new firmware available, follow the instructions on-screen to download and install the new update.
5. If you are still experiencing random resets or shutdowns, you can try factory resetting the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro.
To do so, you need to take the following steps:
- Open the Settings app.
- In Settings, select Google.
- In the Google menu, select Backup.
- Inside Backup, select Back up now.
- After backing up the data on your phone, go back to the Settings app.
- This time, select System.
- Inside System, select Reset options.
- Inside the Reset options menu, select Erase all data (factory reset).
- After factoring resetting your phone, you will need to initialized again. During the setup, you should be able to download any data you have backed up.
If you are still getting random restarts and/or shut downs after trying all the aforementioned potential solutions, then we recommend contacting Google.