How to see the Boot Count of your Android 7.0+ Device

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We love statistics. Even mundane or largely useless statistics can be immensely interesting to people. With adb, or root and a terminal application, it’s possible to view the boot count of your phone which is how many times you’ve started your device! Obviously, this counter is only logged since your phone has been last factory reset. This data is stored in the settings database, so wiping your data in a factory reset means this boot counter is lost. If following the root method below, you will need Magisk or SuperSU. The value that is read, “BOOT_COUNT”, was only added in SDK24, or Android Nougat, so any devices on Android Nougat or Android Oreo will have this counter. Those on Android Marshmallow or lower cannot use this tutorial, as the string does not exist.

It’s not like you’re really missing out on much, though.

See your Boot Count on any Android 7.0+ Device (No Root)

Firstly, follow this tutorial to set up adb on your device. It has everything you need to get it up and running for Windows, Mac or Linux! Once you’ve got all of that setup, you’ll need to run the following two commands via adb. You can check if your device is connected as well with “adb devices”. The image on the right shows you how it should look.

adb shell

settings get global boot_count

That should then give you back an integer value, which is how many times your device has booted.

See your Boot Count on any Android 7.0+ Device (Root)

You need root for this one, so type the following commands in Termux (or any terminal application). The image on the right shows you how it should look.

su

Accept the prompt to grant superuser access.

settings get global boot_count

And that’s all!

With Android Nougat, the string “BOOT_COUNT” was added. This is a string which records the boot count of your device. As mentioned above, this string is wiped if you factory reset. If you care about this minor boot statistic, I suggest not wiping your /data partition. But you probably don’t really care. Maybe.

What’s your boot count? Let us know below!