Is it normal to use Airplane Mode to reset your phone's internet connection?
It seems like every time my phone fails to connect to a site it just hangs forever until I toggle Airplane Mode on/off. This behavior has followed across 3 Android phones and I'm wondering if it's just me.
14 replies
TIL people have to reset their phone's internet connection.
same here, it somehow also fixes miracast issues with samsung tablets at work
Sadly (and similarly anecdotally) yes.
Toggling airplane mode basically "turns off and on again" your phone's network interfaces, resets the routing table, and, I think, flushes the DNS caches. I don't have the problem so much with wi-fi unless I roam between my main and guest networks which use different DNS records for some of my self-hosted apps. (e.g. the "internal" DNS record gets resolved on main wifi, gets cached, and then is inaccessible on guest wifi until the cached record expires).
Mainly, I just toggle the cellular data since my primary issue is that sometimes calls/texts stop working without notice.
I'm wondering if it's a dns issue.
Try enabling this feature.
https://dns-over-https.org/en/guides/how-to-setup-doh-in-android/
I often have to toggle airplane mode when I take the subway. After it loses signal, it won't reconnect until I do. Older android phone.
That's the first thing I do, and the first thing I recommend.
How peculiar. Most of the time, I just hit "reset to default":
Reset to default restores everything to its default settings. If it’s just one web page failing to load that’s pretty overkill.
Did you see the images with the context? That's specifically in the mobile network Access Point Names menu.
Yes, resetting that is unnecessary.
Most people probably never change those settings, so resetting them isn't going to hurt them. But there's no point in digging through those settings and resetting them just because a DNS query hung.
On wifi I turn the wifi on and off again, which is similar steps, but haven't had the same page load hanging crop up on cell service.
Hopefully I will remember this trick if it ever comes up again.
I have to do this multiple times a day. It's not just Internet, sometimes voicemails and text messages will come through immediately after.
I had to do it with my previous Samsungs! I've not had to do it with this one so far. Another option is picking another network manually and then putting it back to automatic.
Lately I have to restart my internet from the settings every couple of days- I didn't actually think to use airplane mode, will be trying that next time.
Edit: so tested it soomer than I thought and yep, sure enough airplane mode fixes it. So thanks for this life hack. Good to know I'm not the only one as well.