Android Phones Get An iPhone-Like Security Feature With Google's New Update

by Aaron Leong — Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 11:28 AM EDT

Google has unleashed a new security feature that will reboot your phone if it senses that it's been locked for three days. The enhancement appeared in the low-key release notes for Google Play Services v25.14 (2025-04-14). This "inactivity reboot" adds a layer of protection by encrypting files and data on a phone and making the device completely inaccessible. This feature mirrors a similar "inactivity reboot" first found in Apple's iOS 18.1.

In a welcome move to improve your Android phone, Google is rolling out a security feature that will automatically reboot your device if it hasn't been used for three days. The update comes via April's Google Play Services v25.14, in which the release notes succinctly states under the Security & Privacy heading:

[Phone] Enables a future optional security feature, which will automatically restart your device if locked for 3 consecutive days.

So far, Google hasn't gone into the technical aspects of this feature drop, but granted, Apple did the same when it quietly rolled out a similar function for iOS in November last year.

In a nutshell, the auto reboot has two possible benefits. Firstly, when left locked and unused, a nefarious person could unlock your device with, say, a photo of yourself or your own fingerprints via lifted prints or directly with your cold dead fingers (cue the "Law and Order" theme song), and that's assuming you have any unlock protection set up in the first place.

However, a complete reboot, otherwise called the "Before First Unlock" (BFU) state, requires a PIN to be physically entered, which can make it more difficult for someone else to access your phone. During BFU, the device will still maintain Wi-Fi and mobile data connections, which ensures that location-finding services can still be utilized. Additionally, data connections over USB and other methods are disabled.

Secondly, when the phone is rebooted due to inactivity, all stored files and information on the phone are encrypted and made inaccessible. This means law enforcement will have a very limited time to access any seized phones before it completely locks them out. Prior to this, authorities could bypass unlock methods using forensic extraction programs via the USB port.

For now, this is all we have on the new feature. Google has yet to share which Android versions will be affected and/or if the function can be manually enabled/disabled by the user.