Today I was installing a few things through Cydia and all of a sudden my iPhone restarted. That in itself is not too weird but when my iPhone rebooted it booted into “Safe Mode.” I had never seen this before. I got a pop-up warning that said,
“Mobile Substrate Safe Mode. We apologize for the inconvenience, but SpringBoard has just crashed. A recent software installation, upgrade, or removal might have been the cause of this. Your device is now running in Safe Mode. All extensions that support this safety system are disabled. Reboot (or restart SpringBoard) to return to normal mode.”
When I hit Dismiss it went to my SpringBoard but everything was grey and it said Safe Mode where the time is usually displayed. Neither Doug nor I had ever seen or heard of this before. Let me know in the comments if you iPhone or iPod Touch has ever booted into Safe Mode.
Loading...
Loading ...
So how did you get out of safemode?
Just restarted my iPhone and everything went back to normal.
you can also fast respring using bossprefs
it is a ‘mobile substrate’ safe mode not an iPhone safe mode as seems to be the impression below. Mobile Substrate is written by Saurik. I assume this is put in place to avoid a continual crash of the springboard by some dodgy theme or plugin. This way you can dissable the last theme item or any mobile substrate plugin (eg 5 icon dock or new safari file access) that you instsalled and stop your phone crashing. Saurik is protecting you all. The man is a living legend! Everyone buy him a beer!
i have a problem with my i phone it went into the safe mode and i did every thing i know and it didnt work i restareted it reinstalled cydia every thing and still in safe mode plz help me
i just removed my safe mode,,, i just un installed the stack aplication
mi cel esta e modo seguro como lo quito?
my iphone went in to this safe mode thing and i tried allthe above mentioned and nttn seemed to work, after a long period of time i tried turning it off it never went off, i decided to reset my iphone and now it doesn’t go on past the apple screen, is thier a way possible of getting this fixed? if so please let me know thanking u in advance
how to exit safe mode, i tried everything.
I have the same problem. But when I try to remove that buggy theme from springboard, it was not there. Safe mode was still there no matter I remove or reinstall springboard.
Anyway to remove it? by program or manually?
Please help
Just remove your last installed cydia app ! I hope that i’ve helped you ! ;)
plz tell how can i get my I phone out of safemode if you guide step by step appreciated
well rite now im getting all my music off my iphone nd transfering it bak into itunes then im going to restart my iphone by downgrading to a different ipsw firmware file 3.2.1 then ima jst hack my iphone again im pretty sure that it wld work nd hopefully this workz to get my iphone out of safe mode but itz in safe mode bcuz my springboard crashed
The following worked for me, I went into Cydia on my iphone and began deleting programs, I last downloaded in order {or as best I could remember). No more Safe Mode. What I think caused mine was an SMS program.
hey i had that problem to all i did was just uninstalled the app that made put me in safe mode from cydia and restart youre springboard!!! hope that helps
Never heard of it…
Are you able to run Apps in the Safe Mode?
Yes, but any extension that is compatible with this system is disabled. Examples of such programs: IntelliScreen (sometimes, the authors have refused to implement this fully unless I turn off some of the protection to hide some of their bugs), Dock2, Five Icon Dock, Stacks, QuickGold, WinterBoard, Veency, etc.
The new “Mobile Substrate” update that came out in Cydia today causes this. Verified on 2 different iPhones.
This is true the thing to blame is the Mobile Substrate update needed by winterboard to operate properly in 2.1 firmware, I hope Saurik will fix this as soon as possible
Yes, Mobile Substrate now “causes” this in that it now has a feature to protect you from SpringBoard crashing. What is happening is that QuickGold or IntelliSense or some other extension is crashing SpringBoard, and Mobile Substrate is putting you in safe mode to help you deal with the problem (in case it is sufficiently deterministic that this is your only recourse).
Mine did it when I was syncing my applications from itunes. It flashed for a second, then at the top it read “safe mode”. My custom battery and slider when to factory settings but it didn’t stop syncing. When it was through syncing my icons was factory and my springboard was a mess liked my phone crashed on me. I just rebooted my phone by pressing the power and home button together and it was fine, like it never happen.
same thing here
YA JUST DELETE STACK AND IT GOES BACK TO NORMAL!
How to delete stack? i know nothing about this phone but ive got the mobile substrate crash problem too.
Could this finally be the fix for the Apple logo of death when installing and app crashes and forced a restore over and over again?
if you have ssh installed and it is activated or you have it set to always be on at boot in bossprefs you can dial into you phone while it is stuck at the logo screen. If you then go to /Users/Applications and move the contents of that folder (ie all appstore apps) out of that folder to your computer so you have no appstore apps your phone will start correctly on the next boot. Simply copy the apps back again and you will be back to a working phone again, until the next crash that is!
Safe Mode is so weird for a Mac. It’s such a Windows thing. To the majority of iPhone users, who are PC owners, it isn’t unusual. To a Mac user, it’s absolutely foreign. I can’t imagine the ipHone designers incorporating something called “Safe Mode” on a Mac, and make no mistake, an iPhone is a Mac.
Are you serious, who cares….
I care. Thanks for the info.
There is Safe Mode for mac.
Of course I’m serious. I’m a Mac chauvinist. To the person who says there is Safe Mode on a Mac, I’ve never encountered Safe Mode on a Mac.
I could be wrong. Nevertheless, I’ve been on
Macs for many years and never seen it.
Macs have had ‘Safe Mode’ since before most people had even heard of Windows. I know that it’s at least as old as Mac OS 6, and that came out twenty years ago.
The reason most Mac users don’t know about it, is that the user must intentionally choose that by hitting the Shift key while booting, there’s no screen that pops up like in Windows right there in your face (and all too frequently, I might add)
Sorry to say it… but jeffries right…
it’s silly to think that any computer wouldn’t have a safe mode…
the idea of one is just that you can get into the core system and run core things… that is for the safety of the user.
it just makes since..
Everyone makes it sound like a HUGE problem in Windows. In fact, it is a Windows Safety net when things go wrong with other things, such as other Apps or Hardware and Drivers. It allows one to go in and safely REMOVE the offending problem. You generally only get them with messing with things that are not approved by windows….
safemode isn’t new to a mac.
Even in the system 6 days you could boot holding shift which would cause extensions not to load. This allowed you to get in an remove a recently added extension that may have been causing a lock-up.
OS X has the same safe mode. It will force a directory check of the startup volume, loads only required kernel extensions, disables non-default fonts, trashes font caches, and disables startup items and login items.
Macs are great, but get your head out of the sand.
Get my head out of the sand? Give me a break. I’ve used Macs since 1984. I have never encountered Safe Mode. I have encountered it hundreds of times with Windows. You know, it’s one thing to enlighten someone who doesn’t know. It’s another thing to swipe at people who who really don’t deserve it.
check out post
Just so you guys know, Macs do have safeboot.
And the safe mode on the iphone sounds very similar (in the way that it disables extensions) to the Macs
If this really is the SWOD replacement, then whoever makes mobilesubstrate is a genius! But only a PC owner would think of a fix like this, lol
pwnd!
Do a review on veency!!! has to be the best app ever!!!!!!!!!
Do a review on X-plane 9!!! has to be the best app ever!!!!!!!!!
I had the same thing today but I didn’t go into safe mode. My phone reatarted and was stuck on the apple logo. My phone became really hot so I decided to do a hard boot.
Everything works fine now!! Thank god. And I’m still on 2.0.1 cause jailbreak is taking forever to come out.
thats what i call Apple Pwnage!
lol
Wow Safe Mode, they DO care!!!
same today after install vnc but reboot and everything fine
That happen to me yesterday. I removed an app, my phone restarted itself and that safe mode came up.
jj
It happened to me after I update some programs on cydia never seen this before.
Gen.1 or 3G phone Brooke? I have a Gen.1 and it has never went into safe mode….
3G
Happened to me today and I’m on 2.0.2 so it is not just a 2.1 new thing.
You can thank Saurik. Safe Mode = SWOD protection
This is exactly correct.
YES!!! it happened to me today. What is weird is that I wasn’t installing , uninstalling or changing anything. It just rebooted and I got safemode . It hasn’t happened since… but I’m wondering how that happened.
hello guys the same just happened to me right now… another thing that has been happening to me is that my phone stops ringing out of nothing, it just vibrates and I’ve checked the silence button of course, then I have to restart it and it rings again…. any clue?
Happened to me too. I was playing Sudoku and suddenly the SpringBoard restart (my iPhone did not rebooted) and I am in safe mode. When reboot my iPhone, everything OK. I have iPhone 1 gen with 2.1 installed.
I actually had something very weird happen when running Installer the other day. I got a phone call, while browsing Installer, and when I tried to answer it, my phone froze. I tried rebooting it, but it was stuck on the pineapple icon. iTunes kept refusing to recognize it, so then I tried rejailbreaking it. Still wouldn’t work. I kept restarting iTunes, and plugging and unplugging the phone. Finally, it just randomly booted up like nothing had happened. The only difference is that now Cydia doesn’t recognize any of the programs I’ve downloaded, before or since. I can still run them, but they appear in Cydia as if I haven’t already put them on my phone. Weird.
ps sorry for replying to the wrong post at the top! User error! :)
Hi guys, I had the same thing happen to me. I think it has to do with the latest update to Winterboard. Saurik has placed a “warning” for everyone on the info page. He does mention that the issue has always been there but now for whatever reason the phones are rebooting, (maybe do to the changes Apple has made in 2.x firmwares). I think the safe mode was put there to protect our phones from losing all our stuff. Saurik has been GREAT and am sure he will have it solved soon.
That notice is completely unrelated to Safe Mode. When you install WinterBoard, for some reason I don’t yet understand, SpringBoard gets disconnected from the thermal watchdog. When this happens it takes about a minute before the phone gets concerned that it is overheating and reboots. This is not a crash and does not invoke Safe Mode.
Some of you may experience some issues after updating Cydia and installing or de-installing applications. The error you may see is Mobile Substrate Safe Mode. According to Saurik it has to do with Winterboard and the update of Mobile Substrate in Cydia. This was needed to get many applications compatible with firmware 2.1.
The solution for this issue is simple. Just reboot your iPhone and all will be ok again. Saurik is currently working on a fix so no worries.
This is completely false. I am not working on fixing anything. All of my software was working on 2.1 from the beginning and Mobile Safe Mode A) does not cause these problems and B) does not need to get fixed to make anything work. Other software is crashing and Mobile Safe Mode kicks in to let you fix the problem. Please please please stop spreading these rumors about Mobile Substrate.
I also saw this Safe Mode message today, it happened several times but only when I was creating a Web Clip i.e. while in Mobile Safari I chose to add a page to the Home Page and when I did this the spinner started spinning for a few seconds and the Safe Mode screen popped up. FWIW I have the 5 Icon utility activy on the dock and it caused 4 icons to be visible in a row and the 5th icon was pushed to the side.
As mentioned earlier in this thread its fastest if you go into Boss Prefs and do a fast spring rather than doing a restart of the phone. Whats odd is the Web Clip was still created and nothing seemed out of sorts except being forced into Safe Mode and having to spring start the phone. I then created 3 more Web Clips of different web sites and the same thing happened EVERY time.
Though it’s very annoying IF this is actually saving us from something dramatic happening to mess up my iPhone then I must thank the Substrate author for adding this safety net.
I think that Stacks had a bug where if you added a webclip it immediately crashed all of SpringBoard. If you have that installed, please remove it.
Just wanted to know if this happened to anyone else. I don’t know what happened, but now my Cydia won’t work after syncing with iTunes to backup some applications. Now all of a sudden when i launch Cydia, it just springs back to the springboard. Anyone know why and how to solve this prob.? Thanks.
It never happened to me so far. I have 2 first gen with 2.0.2 and 2.1. It would be very interresting to know how to invoke this Safe Mode intentionally to be able to remove a bad application like on Windows. Do you think it possible?
You should never need to invoke Safe Mode manually. If you need to end up in Safe Mode (SpringBoard is crashing) you will end up in Safe Mode.
I had this happen too. And it was a friend who was playing with my phone when it did it. I thought he just had the touch of death because it has never happened to me.
I just rebooted my phone and it was fine after.
Happened to me aswell, im on 2.0.2 it done it twice i just restarted and it was fine and still is at the moment.
Thanks to bosspreff’s resarting the springboard was easy too which seemed to help
I just got it today after installing IntelliScreen… and twice!!!
Yes, welcome to IntelliScreen: the program designed to crash SpringBoard fastest and most often.
thats some scary $#it that has never happen to me. What were u installing?
I found out how to enter safe mode
1. Install veency on your iphone/ipod
2. connect to your iphone/ipod with a vnc server
3. hold your middle mouse button and slide to power off
4. instead of turning off, your iphone/ipod will go into safe mode
I copied this info from here http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?p=933714#post933714
One reason for me I think is IntelliScreen and Second reason is Mobile Substrate. Saurik if you can please fix it soon as possible, it is big stuff.
Mobile Substrate is not to blame for this. Mobile Substrate is attempting to save you from IntelliScreen crashing your phone. There is seriously nothing for me to fix here.
this just happened i was deleting a web app and it was wierd cause it was taking some time then poof a message pops up saying Mobile Substrate Safe Mode but uh its all good now i restarted my phone and its working well i wondered why this happens
happend to me like 3 times already after i installed intelliscreen … this app is really getting to me
my iPhone has just booted into Safe Mode too!!
happend today 3 times after i installed the newest intelliscreen update!!
also happened to me twice after installing intelling screen, during locking. I’ve uninstalled intelliscreen which was causing my mail to crash very frequently. will see if safe mode pops up again…
I installed an app from itunes and now my ipod touch is stuck on the spining wheel. what should I do? Can I fix ths w/o a restore?
You have probably run into the bug in App Store where, if you install too many applications, then SpringBoard can’t resynchronize its icon catalog before it is killed by the watchdog. If you can ssh in you can temporarily dismantle /var/mobile/Applications and spoonfeed them back to SpringBoard. This bug has been fixed AFAIK in 2.1, which everyone should upgrade to ASAP.
Happened same thing while uninstalling MobileTerminal. Restart also helped.
Same here, MobileTerminal.
I just went to winterboard and clicked on a theme
and it went back to normal.
When I am listening to music it crashes while receiving a text/call.
Any one found a solution for this or does it require a restore.
just reboot (turn of and turn back on) and safe mode should go away
I believe this is due to a bug in IntelliScreen. You should send some nasty e-mails to the authors asking when they will fix this bug.
I PUT A THEME ON MY IPHONE AND IT WENT TO SAFE MODE I FIXED IT JUST BY REBOOTING
EVERY time I recieve a txt my iphone goes into safe mode! I’ve tried uninstalling winterboard yet still this problem persists! Anyone have any ideas?
ok….after many uninstallings of many different apps it seems that ‘Kate’ was the cause of my (above) problem. Shame as I found Kate a rather usefull app!
Mobile Safe Mode is designed to protect you from crashes in SpringBoard. When SpringBoard crashes it is often deterministic and it is often fatal. This is where you usually end up with the “SWOD”. Now, instead, Mobile Safe Mode kicks in and disables extensions (only ones that are compatible with this system, unfortunately) and puts you into a state where you may be able to fix the problem.
THIS IS NOT A BUG IN MOBILE SUBSTRATE. This is a /protection/ feature of Mobile Substrate that is protecting you from /other software/.
The #1 most common reason SpringBoard crashes is because you are using IntelliScreen. This product is very very unstable and crashes almost all the time. I’m frankly surprised at how often this thing crashes.
The next issue that people often have is that they are using Kate at the same time as some extension that isn’t compatible with Kate, such as my extensions WinterBoard or Five Icon Dock.
A final rather recent set of issues has to do with QuickGold. The author has decided to hook into a number of the installation routines and was crashing the phone consistently when you installed applications.
Finally, I think Stacks crashes if you add webclips.
I repeat: THIS IS NOT A BUG IN MOBILE SUBSTRATE. Something /else/ you have installed is crashing horribly and you are being rescued by Mobile Substrate.