I had two Android phones brought to me within the last couple of weeks with uncontrollable pop-up ads that made them practically unusable.
Any app promising to free up space, repair your system, or speed up your phone is lying to you. You believed them, so now you are infected. Constant pop-ups and notifications.
If you have any control, go into “Settings” and then “Apps & notifications”.
You should see “Recently opened apps”. You can use that to identify what apps are causing the problems. My picture shows the phone after cleaning.
Tap on “See all 87 apps”. Your number will reflect the number of apps you have installed. Scroll down through the list and try to identify the culprits: cleaners, optimizers, and even recovery. Don’t worry, you can’t remove anything that Android doesn’t want you to.
Tap an app listing to see the app information page. Look at the number of “Notifications”. If I remember correctly, one of the installed cleaners was showing “35 a day”. These are your pop-up ads or unwanted notifications.
I blurred the name and logo in my example. This app wasn’t a troublemaker, only here for reference.
Tap “Force stop”, accept any prompts. Then tap “Uninstall”, accept any prompts.
Go back to the app list and repeat. Any app with a high number of notifications is a good candidate for a culprit. This time I was successful.
Don’t forget to check your games and other apps.
Unfortunately, the first guy who brought me his phone was not so fortunate. I could not get control of the phone to do what needed to be done.
I tried starting up the device in “Safe Mode”.
There are two ways to do it. Try one way, if it doesn’t work, try the other.
Press and hold the power button until the power menu appears. Touch and hold the Power off option. (My old Galaxy J3 shows a green check mark with a Safe mode confirmation message – I tap that). When prompted with Reboot to safe mode, tap OK to confirm.
or
Completely power off your device. Turn on the device, and when the logo appears, press and hold the Volume down button. If done correctly, you will see Safe mode displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen. (This one also works on my Galaxy J3)
Unfortunately, I still didn’t have an Uninstall option for the listed apps.
Last resort, “Reset”. The owner said a reset was OK. They didn’t have anything on it and only used it for Facebook. Backup first. Reset erases everything. I was able to get into the settings to reset the phone.
Settings -> System (or General Management) -> Reset or Reset Options -> Factory Data Reset. (Galaxy J3 -> About -> Reset) Review what will be erased, then tap Reset Phone (or Erase All Data). Enter your PIN/password when prompted, then confirm.
It will restart and then run through the original setup routine.
Let us know your experiences in the comments.
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