How to Reset Your Xbox One

The Xbox One is a pretty advanced piece of technology. Every day millions of users power up their Xbox One to play video games. At any given time, thousands are streaming video from YouTube or Netflix and listening to songs through Xbox Music. The Xbox One is meant to be that all-in-one, futuristic entertainment system we all dreamed of during the heyday of the Xbox 360. All of those features come at a price though. The Xbox One is also a complex thing and sometimes things go wrong. When an app freezes or a feature stops working it’s time to do a reset. You need to know how to reset your Xbox One.

Before we continue with this tutorial it is absolutely important that you understand the different kinds of resets and different power options for the Xbox One.

A hard reset is when you manually trigger a complete reboot of the Xbox One through a hardware or software button. When you perform a hard reset, it’s usually because you’re having trouble with an app or service on the Xbox One that should be working correctly. There’s an option in the Settings app to reset the Xbox One. Think of this option as a Restart button. In fact, there’s a Restart Now button in the Xbox One Settings app under Power & Start Up for this too.

Factory resets are for when something has seriously gone wrong with your Xbox One or you’re planning to sell it to someone else who you don’t want to give access to your games, content and Netflix account. Hard resets are great for fixing an app, but a factory reset wipes away anything and everything you have on your console. It’s for that reason that you absolutely want to stay away from factory reses if you can.

The Xbox One has three power states. First there’s the on power state. When you’re using your console in any manner that’s what that is. The second is a completely off power state. Most users don’t know this, but chances are they’ve never turned their Xbox One off completely. Instead of default to the completely off power state, the Xbox one is goes into stand by. It’s this mode that allows the Xbox One to hear you when you say “Xbox, On.” This is also how your game updates are downloaded. When you do a hard reset you’re sending your Xbox One into the completely off power state so that it can restart from scratch.

Let’s begin.

Factory Restore

Turn on your Xbox One by saying “Xbox, On” or by pressing the Guide button on your controller.

Open the My Games and Apps area with your controller or say “Xbox go to My Games and Apps.”

Say “Apps” or use the joystick on your Xbox One controller to select Apps from the menu on the far left and selecting Apps.

Now scroll over to the right until you see the Settings app. If you have a Kinect 2 sensor say, “Xbox go to Settings.”

Welcome to the Settings app. Scroll over on the right and select System. If you’re using a Kinect sensor simply say “System.”

Use your controller to select Restore factory defaults. Or say “Restore Factory Defaults.”

Now select Restore factory defaults from the pop-up.

Again this is what’s described as a factory restore. This option should only be used for deleting everything off your system.

Hard Reset

There are two ways to do a hard reset of your Xbox One.

The first way is to hold your finger over the glowing Xbox logo on the front of your console. After a while the system will completely reset. Keep in mind that you may have to turn your TV back on if you had the Xbox One managing it.

Again, the second way is to go to the Power & Start Up menu in the Settings app and select Restart Now.

Good luck fixing the issues you’re having with your Xbox One. Chances are that if it’s something easily fixable a hard reset will get it back in working order. If you’re playing a video game remember to hit save or you could lose some progress. If you’re still having issues after a hard reset or a factory restore it’s time to contact Microsoft’s Xbox Support. They’re available online, on Twitter or by phone.