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When you’re playing around with your network settings on your phone, you might accidentally toggle something that you want to undo. This is where reset network settings would come in.
Another reason why you might want to reset your network settings is because a professional told you to. If you’re troubleshooting another issue with your phone, one of the suggestions might have been to reset your network settings – but how do you do this?
Today we’re going to be looking at how you can reset your network settings on your phone.
What Does Reset Network Settings Mean?
Before you jump into resetting your phone settings, what does this actually mean? Knowing what you’re resetting beforehand will ensure that you don’t accidentally delete things off of your phone that you cannot get back in the future.
It is always important to understand what you are agreeing to before making major changes in the settings app of your phone.
Resetting your network settings refers to the deletion of some data from your phone. However, it will not delete all of your data.
Resetting network settings is used to remove all data stored on your phone related to the internet and other networks. This can include Wi-Fi names and passwords, login information for specific networks, and other information for paired devices such as speakers, headphones, and laptops.
What Does Resetting Your Network Settings Do?
Most devices will have an option in their settings to reset the network settings. This allows you to delete information relating to your internet connections and paired devices.
In the majority of cases, you will either be able to reset all of your network settings or just some of them. The first option will remove all the settings relating to your device’s network, while the latter will allow you to manually pick which ones you want to delete.
Being able to manually pick which settings you can remove from your phone is often the preferred method. This is because most people don’t want to delete every single setting just to put them back onto the device.
Manually picking which setting to remove saves time and patience. For example, if you want to remove a Wi-Fi setting that you don’t use anymore, you can do this without removing every single Wi-Fi setting you have on your phone.
This means that the old Wi-Fi information is gone without you having to log back into all the other Wi-Fi networks you had saved on your phone.
What Data Is Lost When Resetting Network Settings?
While resetting your network settings will remove some data from your phone, it is important to note that this is not the same as resetting your factory settings. The latter refers to resetting your phone to the state in which it left the factory – without any pictures, messages, apps, phone numbers – nothing.
Resetting network settings, on the other hand, refers to removing all data regarding Wi-Fi and internet, local networks, and paired devices. It will leave your images, texts, and apps all intact.
Network settings will also not delete your web browser history or saved bookmarks, so don’t worry about having to set these up again.
To ensure that resetting your network settings is the correct choice for you to do, here is a list of the things that will be deleted from your phone:
- Wi-Fi saved names and passwords
- VPN settings and preferences, including your local history
- Bluetooth device connections and preferences
- Data management of cellular network preferences
- 3G/4G/5G settings
What Should You Do If You Accidentally Reset Network Settings?
Don’t worry, nothing in the way of pictures or apps are going to be deleted off of your phone. Accidentally resetting your network settings might be annoying, but it is nowhere near as bad as accidentally factory resetting your phone.
You will have to add your Wi-Fi passwords in again and pair your devices once more, as well as setting your preferences for them all again. You can do this over time when you run into a forgotten setting.
Summary
So there you go! That was our guide to resetting network settings on phones. We hope we’ve helped clear up any confusion you may have had about what exactly happens when you reset your network settings.