Imagine sitting down on your couch with food and drinks on a Friday night, ready to watch your favorite TV show or movie. You turn your TV on, click on Netflix, but it’s not loading. Don’t cancel your Netflix and chill just yet. In this article, we will share with you how to restart an app on your Samsung TV to fix your problem.
How to restart apps on Samsung TV
Although there could be many possible reasons as to why the app on your Samsung TV is not loading correctly, restarting them usually fixes the issue. And the steps are not complicated to do it. As per Samsung, your TV needs to be rebooted (they call it cold booting) in order for you to restart your downloaded apps.
Restart apps on your Samsung TV by cold booting
Here are the ways on how to restart your Samsung TV app by rebooting your TV:
- Press and hold the power button on your Samsung TV remote while the TV is turned on. Wait until your TV turns off and on
- Turn your TV off and unplug it from the outlet or power source. Wait for at least 30 seconds before you plug it back in and turn it back on
Whichever step you choose to do, your Samsung TV will be rebooted. Doing so will force quit all the running apps on your TV and will be restarted once you relaunch them. Rebooting your TV usually fixes the issue when your apps froze or won’t load properly.
Turning your TV off and on VS Cold booting
When you first noticed that an app on your Samsung TV is not loading properly, you may have tried to turn your TV off and on but did not resolve the issue. This is because when you turn your TV off by pressing the power button on your remote, it does not shut the TV off completely.
Whenever you turn your TV off by pressing the power button, it only goes into stand-by mode. This keeps your TV’s operating system booted, and only turns off the screen for power saving. Many users prefer stand-by mode because it’s much easier and faster to turn their TV on.
On the other hand, cold booting your Samsung TV will clear all the memory and close all the apps running in the background. So when you turn your TV back on, you will be able to fully restart all your applications.
Updating your Samsung TV
Just like the apps on your smartphone, certain apps on your Samsung TV would require your appliance’s operating system version to be updated for you to continue using it. To update your TV’s operating system, follow the steps below:
1. On your Samsung TV remote control, launch the Smart Hub by pressing and holding the “Home” button
2. Go to “Settings” by navigating to the left. It should be a gear icon on the left far side of the menu
3. Navigate through the options and select “Support”
4. A menu on the right will appear and select “Software Update”
5. Click on “Update Now”
Your app should start updating. Try relaunching it to see if it will start loading properly. If you also want your apps to update automatically, you can go through the same steps above and select “Auto Update” in the update menu.
Uninstalling and reinstalling apps on your Samsung TV
If updating the app did not resolve the issue, you can also try to uninstall and reinstall it.
1. On your Samsung TV remote control, launch the Smart Hub by pressing and holding the “Home” button
2. Select “Apps” on the left menu panel to launch all the apps installed in your TV
3. Go to “Settings.” It should be a gear icon on the top right corner of the menu
4. Hover the arrow to the app you want to uninstall
5. In the actions options under the app, select “Delete.”
6. A pop up menu should appear. Click on “Delete” again to confirm this action
Go to the Apps home screen again to check if the app has been successfully deleted from your Samsung TV. Once you confirm that it has been deleted, you can now reinstall the app by following the steps below:
1. On your Samsung TV remote control, launch the Smart Hub by pressing and holding the “Home” button
2. Select “Apps” on the left menu panel to launch all the apps installed in your TV
3. On the upper right corner of your TV screen, select the search icon
4. Type in the name of the app you need to reinstall
5. Select the app to download it again
NOTE: You need to enter developer mode in order to uninstall pre-installed apps on your Samsung TV. These apps include Netflix, Apple TV, and SmartThings.
Resetting Smart HUB on your Samsung TV
If you have already tried all the steps above and still did not resolve the issue, the last troubleshooting step you can do is to reset the Smart Hub on your TV. Note that resetting the Smart Hub will also reset the settings on all the apps on your TV and log you out on all of them.
Here are the steps on how to reset Smart Hub:
- On your Samsung TV remote control, launch the Smart Hub by pressing and holding the “Home” button
- On the upper right corner of your TV screen, launch “Settings”
- Navigate through the options and select “Support”
- Select “Self Diagnostics”
- Select “Reset Smart Hub”
- When asked for a PIN, enter 0000.
Conclusion
If an app on your TV does not load properly, there are a number of troubleshooting steps you can do to try and fix the issue. Now that we’ve shared with you how to restart an app on your Samsung TV, you’re most likely to resolve the issue and continue using the app.
