Hi guys,

Sometimes it's useful to reboot your android phone into recovery/download mode. For example, if you want to do a factory reset or root your device. One of the ways of rebooting into such mode is by using special combination of buttons. But if you don't know such combination, there is another way of doing that - by using usb cable and special program called 'adb' (android debug bridge). Below we will discuss this second way. Also, I will be doing everything on Linux, because this is what my website about. But you can also do it on Windows or Mac OS.

1. Download android sdk command line tools
Open this url https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html and download zip file "sdk-tools-linux-3859397.zip"

2. Extract files and install platform-tools

unzip sdk-tools-linux-3859397.zip
./tools/bin/sdkmanager "platform-tools"

3. Connect your phone via USB cable to your computer


4. Detect devices

./platform-tools/adb devices

In the output of this command you will find your device name.

5. Reboot into recovery mode

./platform-tools/adb -s yourdevicename reboot recovery

6. Reboot into download mode

./platform-tools/adb -s yourdevicename reboot download

7. Reboot into bootloader mode (for non-samsung devices)

./platform-tools/adb -s yourdevicename reboot bootloader

You can also watch this short video tutorial and see how it works in action: