If your iPad mini won’t turn on after you’ve pressed the Home button, there’s probably an easy fix. In most cases, bringing your iPad mini back to life only takes a few steps.
- Its on? If the Home button isn’t responding, iPad mini might be turned off. Try pressing the Sleep/Wake button on the top of the iPad and wait for the Apple logo to appear before releasing it.
- Is the screen too dark? Your iPad may be on, but you can’t see the screen because the brightness is too dim. Take your iPad into a dark room and try to adjust the brightness. If you’ve updated to iOS 12, swipe down from the top right corner. For iOS 11 or earlier, swipe up from the bottom.
- the battery . As long as you put down your iPad Mini, without turning it off, apps running in the background will continue to drain the battery. This means that you can drain the entire battery of the iPad Mini, even without using the device. Wait a second before you plug your iPad into the charger, and look in the upper right corner where the battery icon appears so you’re ready to notice what’s happening before and after you plug the charger into the wall outlet. This is what to look for:
- If the battery icon is red instead of green, the battery is extremely low. Just let it continue to charge, without using the iPad, until the icon turns green to give the iPad a chance to regain battery strength.
- If the screen is still black and you don’t even see a red battery icon, iPad mini might not have enough power to reveal the battery status. Let it continue to charge for a few hours, possibly overnight, so the battery can recover.
- If the battery icon blinks before the screen goes dark, iPad mini isn’t getting enough power to charge. Make sure you are using at least a 5W USB wall-plug power adapter.
Battery voltage . If you have let your iPad Mini into a hot car or in sub-zero temperatures, your iPad might shut down or refuse to charge. If this is the case, bring your iPad mini to room temperature before trying to boot up or charge the device again.
- Check the charging port . Is there dirt or dust blocking the charging port? Link might prevent the charger from making the connection so your iPad can charge. Try using a wooden toothpick to clean the charging port.
- Burp your Mini . This is not a joke. Some iPad users have reported on forums that “burping” the iPad helps realign loose cables that aren’t making connections. To try to burp:
- Make sure the iPad is turned off.
- Cover the front and back of the iPad with a towel and pat the back of the iPad, as if you were burping a baby.
- Please try for at least a minute before unplugging the iPad and try to turn it on again.
- Restart iPad Mini . If you’ve tried to turn on iPad using the Sleep/Wake button and charged the battery for at least 24 hours, but your iPad Mini still won’t turn on, try resetting it. Here’s how:
- Simultaneously press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button.
- Hold down both buttons until the Apple logo appears. Initially you may see the slider, or the screen may go black, but keep pressing the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons until the Apple logo appears, which may take 2-20 seconds.
- Once the Apple logo appears, release the buttons.
- Your iPad Mini should be back on and ready to go in a few seconds.
- Perform a system update . You can try to reinstall the iOS software on your device. This won’t erase all your data, but it will try to reinstall the latest update. How to test this method:
- Get ready: On Windows or Mac, open iTunes. Make sure your computer has the latest version of iTunes before you begin.
- Insert the charging cable into the iPad, but not into the computer.
- Hold down the Home button on iPad while simultaneously connecting the other end of the charging cable to your computer.
- Keep pressing the Home button on your iPad until the Connect to iTunes screen appears.
- Repeat the steps above if the Connect to iTunes screen doesn’t appear after 30 seconds.
- Release the Home button when you see a screen showing the lightning cable, arrow, and red iTunes icon. You will see an option to Update or Restore. Select Update.
- Recovery mode . If nothing else has worked, you may need to put your iPad into recovery mode. This will involve restoring your iPad to factory settings, which will erase all data on your iPad. If you’ve already backed up your iPad Mini, you’ll be able to recover the data from the last backup.
To put your iPad Mini into recovery mode, follow the steps above for system update, but choose Recovery instead of Update. Then select OK to restore factory defaults.
- Let an expert take a look at it . If none of the above solutions worked, you may have a problem with your hardware. Your last option is to go to the Apple Genius Bar or an Apple Certified Repair Center.