How to turn on an Android phone without a functioning power button

Whether we like to admit it or not, the smartphone we pay hundreds of dollars to buy every few years are remarkably fallible. Metal might not dent and glass might not crack like it used to, but regardless of how capable your phone is, screens can crack and buttons can break.

You might be able to make it a few months with a cracked screen, but broken buttons are a whole other beast. There are digital volume controls that are a swipe away, but when your phone turns off and your power button is broken? That’s a major problem. If you need to last a bit longer before you upgrade to a Pixel 9 or Galaxy S24, or you’re simply holding out until your repair appointment, here’s how you can turn on your Android phone if you don’t have a working power button.

Before you do anything, make sure your device is charged

Save yourself some time and check

Many of the methods for fixing your Android phone when its buttons might be broken are pretty involved, so before you get started there’s one thing you should check first. Is your phone charged?

A power button can appear broken if there’s simply not enough charge on your device to even display an empty battery icon on the screen. Before you commit to a more complicated solution or scheduling repair, connect your smartphone to power and let it charge for a bit. Once it’s charged and your power button still doesn’t work, then you can move on to other solutions.

How to turn on an Android phone without a working power button

Grab your computer, phone, and a USB-C cable

Your options are limited if you want to turn your phone on without a working power button. Essentially, unless your device has been put into developer mode and has USB debugging enabled before the button breaks, you’re basically out of luck. If you own a Pixel or Samsung phone and happen to get it properly set up, you’ll still need a USB-C cable and your computer to turn it on. You’ll also need the correct tools to make sure that your computer is able to interface with your phone.

The most important is Google’s USB drivers, which gives your Windows PC the ability to recognize your phone. You’ll also need Google’s Platform Tools to make sure you can send commands directly to your Pixel. With those files downloaded, the first thing you’re going to need to do is actually install Google’s USB driver to make sure your Windows PC connects:

1. Open the Device Manager app on your Windows PC.
2. Click on the “Add drivers” button, second from the last in the top menu bar.
3. Click on the Browse button.
4. Find and click on the USB driver folder on your PC, then click on “Next.”
5. Device Manager will install the drivers, and then you should be good to go.

With the USB drivers installed, you can put your phone into “Fastboot Mode” and initiate a reboot in Command Prompt:

1. Open Command Prompt as an Administrator on your Windows PC.
2. Type in “cd” then the path address of your unzipped platform tools folder (you can right-click on the folder and then click on “Copy as path address” for easier access) and hit Enter.
3. Then take your powered-off Android phone and hold the volume down button.
4. While you’re still holding the volume down button, plug in your USB-C cable, and then plug that cable into your Windows PC.
5. Let go when you see red text on your screen that says “Fastboot Mode.”
6. Return to Command Prompt and type in “fastboot reboot” and hit Enter.
7. Your phone should start rebooting.

Again, this method is by no means convenient. It’s also wholly dependent on a good bit of setup being completed beforehand. But when you’re desperate for a solution, anything is better than nothing, and it isn’t all that complicated to do in the grand scheme of things.

How to deal with a broken button when your Android phone is on

Accessbility features are your friend

Once your phone is on, you can enable software-based buttons for controlling most of the key features that would have previously required the use of a hardware button. These have existed in one form or another on most Android phones for years at this point, and if you’ve used the AssistiveTouch menu on an iPhone, you know more or less what you’re getting yourself into.

You can enable Android’s Accessibility Menu in Settings:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap on the Accessibility section.
3. Scroll down until you see Accessibility Menu, then tap on it.
4. Tap the toggle next to “Accessibility Menu shortcut” to turn the menu on.

Once the Accessibility Menu is enabled, you can access it at any point by tapping on the semi-transparent green three-dot menu on the side of your phone screen. Inside the larger menu it summons, you can access Google Assistant, power your phone off, adjust the volume, and change the brightness, all without having to push a button or swipe through extra menus.

As devices get fewer buttons, their durability matters even more

Your ability to turn on your phone is one of its most important physical features

In a world where smartphones still have removable batteries, the issue of getting your phone to turn on and off on its own might be simpler. But we largely gave up that world a long time ago, and now we live in one where phones wirelessly charge, where plugging them in to power isn’t a guarantee that they’ll actually turn on, and where physical buttons are slowly going extinct.

All of those changes aren’t necessarily bad, but they do put the owner of a broken phone in the position where they might have to jump through some complicated hoops to keep their phone functional, as this guide suggests.