Hacker News Reader

Comment by philipov | Hacker News Reader

> law enforcement officers and forensic experts were concerned that some iPhones were rebooting themselves under mysterious circumstances, which made it harder for them to get access to the devices and extract data.

> iOS 18 comes with improved anti-theft measures. Three days w/o unlock, the iPhone will reboot, preventing thieves from getting your data.

It's poetic, isn't it?

View on HN

I'd like to be able to specify much shorter times than 3 days, I could have my phone reboot every night while sleeping if possible

On iPhone, you can use the Shortcuts app to do this. Create a new shortcut with the Restart action and save it. Then go to the Automations tab, set the schedule, and select your new shortcut. Make sure it's set to Run immediately.

Woah, I never cease to be surprised by the unexpected kinds of things that Shortcuts allows (given all the obvious ones it does not). Thank you!

Out of curiosity (and because I'm not going to try that for tomorrow morning) – does that kill my alarms, or does iOS schedule/store these somewhere accessible before first unlock?

It’s actually pretty powerful and you can have automation tigger based on all sorts of things.

I travel a lot so have it turn on specific data SIMs when GPS detects I’m in that country.

iOS alarms continue to work after overnight upgrades which involve a reboot, and also work when you plug in a dead phone before bed, so they’ve apparently figured this out.

AFAIK there's (private?) API surface to request a container that isn't encrypted to your PIN specifically for the lock screen to work.

This leads to a confirmation prompt, and unless you select "Restart" it does nothing. Do you know a way around that?

The “run immediately” setting mentioned in the parent comments prevents this. I did this recently on my phone and can confirm it works.

Not for me, unfortunately.

Why could this be? latest iOS? Regional difference?

I set my work android phone to go off 10pm and come on by 7am everyday. It's under settings -> system. It also has the ability to restart on any day/time you want.

Very good suggestion, however I’m not sure if it’s healthy for a phone to reboot 365d/year?

Why not?

Because it's healthy to take some days off

Maybe it should reboot every day for 5 days and then not reboot for 2 days.

Of course, that would be week security.

/ducks

Eh hem... 4 day work weeks are more productive so not rebooting for 3 days should be even weeker.

> Very good suggestion, however I’m not sure if it’s healthy for a phone to reboot 365d/year?

There is no (Windows) problem that a reboot cannot fix. /s

my 2021 samsung can do that

but my new pixel cannot

Just tested on my pixel:

Go to Settings

Tap on System

Select "Advanced."

Tap on "Scheduled restart."

Toggle the switch to enable it.

Choose the day and time you want your device to restart automatically.

Suppose all police would just undo that setting as soon as they got the phone.

Can’t do that when the phone is locked. If they can do that, they’re “in” and it will take them less than a day to take all data from the phone.

The point is that they don't have the passcode so they couldn't.

I have no "Advanced".

That’s why you gotta run graphene

I would be ok with 8 hours during daytime, and some smart functionality for sleepy time. After all it’s just a reboot. I can’t remember the last decade I didn’t unlock my phone during the daytime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com