How to: Turn off an Android Phone Remotely

Turning off an Android phone remotely could bring plenty of advantages. For example, if a phone is ever into the wrong hands and you just don’t want to let anyone else than you explore your phone – you can instantly turn it off just by sending an SMS. Chances are, the person won’t even understand what happened and won’t bother you anymore. Or maybe if you ever lose your phone, you could turn it off. Or if you left your phone back home and don’t want it to ring or attended by someone else, just send an SMS from someone else’s phone and it turns off. There are plenty of reasons to avail this feature!

Root is required to avail this feature! Even though rooting is pretty easy these days; not everyone is familiar with it. Most people fear rooting a device and hence they can’t bring out the most of an Android device. In stock settings, Google blocks the access to root files to protect the security. If any file in the root directory gets deleted or infected, the device could malfunction. To avoid this from happening, Google kept it restricted to access certain files. Rooting a device breaks the barrier and lets the user access every single file located on the device – this process is called root. Rooting provides added features in many ways, also allows the installation of custom ROMs.



However, to turn off an Android phone with SMS; this is how to do it:

1. The phone has to be rooted. Because the software required to remotely turn off your phone by SMS requires root access. To ensure whether you have root or not, download ‘Root Checker’ from Google Play Store and verify root. If you have root then you are good to proceed with the further steps. If you don’t have root access, go back and search rooting methods for your device. Be careful! Every device has their own rooting method. Don’t just end up bricking your phone.
2. Don’t install the required software from Play Store, you can’t since it’s a flash-able zip file. Instead, download Remote Turn Off  to your computer and copy paste it to the device’s memory. The zip file will be flashed from the custom recovery; that’s why you need root access. You can’t have a custom recovery without having root access.
3. Reboot to the custom recovery. Depends on the recovery, the option to flash zip from SD card might be located in different places. However, find this option and find the zip file in the memory using this option. Flash the package, wait for it, and then again reboot the device from the custom recovery.
3. You will find the app in the app drawer. Set it up with a code. When you send an SMS with a command to turn off the phone, it will verify your SMS with the code. Make sure you set something you can recall later. The Help section can resolve further confusions.
And you are done.
This was easy! Just an SMS is all it takes now to turn your phone off remotely.