98%. That’s how long the battery indicator hovered there while I stared at my phone as if the thing owed me money.
I’d already deleted and reinstalled it, killed it in the task manager like six times and restarted my phone twice, and it still remained stuck at that exact same percentage every time. At that point, i actually started to think that maybe the game just was broken.
It wasn’t. It was completely unrelated to the game, and once I realized what was really happening when that game was loading up, I stopped losing my mind every time that happened in other games.
What Causes Mobile Games To Freeze On Loading Screens In The First Place
A loading screen is no simple waiting animation. Your phone is downloading more game data, validating files, connecting to game servers, and may even be syncing your save data, all in parallel.
The worst part is that when one of those parts of the loading process stops working or gets stuck, the loading screen just stays there forever and never actually gives you a proper error. The level of user-friendliness in these situations is nothing short of infuriating.
From my experience, it’s generally down to a few specific problems, and once you know what to look for, fixing it is no longer a mystery.
The Wrong Assumption I Kept Making
For years I always thought a loaded-loading-screen long meant something was just broken on the game’s side (e.g., server problems, beyond my ability to fix). It’s occasionally true but far more frequently than I’d like, it turns out, the issue was in my own phone.
After I quit attempting to contact the game servers and actually looked at my own device first, I was able to resolve this in a matter of minutes instead of rebooting my phone constantly and crossing my fingers.
Step By Step Fixes That Actually Worked For Me
Step 1: Verify Your Internet Connection Correctly (and Not Just Glance At The Bars)
Seems obvious, but I really mean test your speed, not just by looking at the signal icon. I’ve had a full strength WiFi signal with a practically unusable connection.
Open up a browser and access a website. Or, even better, give your connection a test using an app such as Speedtest by Ookla. If you’ve got a weak or sluggish internet speed, then it’s probably the reason why your game has frozen during its initial load.
I’ve been switching between WiFi and mobile data (or just to one of them) more times than I can remember to fix this. We also assume it’s just our phones or the game but it’s possible that the network you’re on is the problem.
Step 2: Forcibly close the app in its entirety, don’t just minimize it.
Don’t just minimize the game to the background – actually close it. In your recent apps view, fully swipe the game off the screen to close it, then start it again.
I’d previously just hit the home button and open the app again, which doesn’t eliminate whatever process was hung. Fully force quitting it removes that hung state much more effectively.
Step 3: Clear the App’s Cache
This was where I shot myself in the foot straight away. I opened up my apps in my phone, located the game and then cleared everything: cache and data in one go, not realising that would delete my locally saved progress too.
Use this instead: Settings > Apps find the game and click it Storage and then Clear Cache – not Data. It will delete temporary corrupt files and still leave your save and login information alone.
So, I’ve been doing this properly, and a froze screen has solved itself practically every time in my experience.
Step 4: Check For Available Storage Space
Did not connect this until I experienced it first hand. When you download a game, it needs free space to download and unpack the loading assets. When your phone storage is nearly full, loading can stop without any warning.
Head to Settings > Storage to see how much space you have available. I always want to keep at least 2-3GB of free space for gaming because many live service games continue downloading additional content during the loading screen without warning.
Step 5: Updating The Game (Even If It Is Set To Auto-Update)
I thought my games were always updating in the background. You can set auto-updating silently go awry: Maybe you were on mobile data when a game was supposed to update, or maybe you paused auto-updates once and then completely forgot about them.
Manually access the Play Store or App Store and search for your game and verify you’re not already on the newest version.
Step 6: Actually Restart Your Phone (And Don’t Just Lock The Screen)
I know it may sound a bit like the tech support advice you’ve heard before (have you tried turning it off and on again?) but there’s a real distinction between locking your screen and a full restart. A full restart helps clear background processes and temporary memory issues.
This alone cleared the stuck loading screen for me more than once, particularly when the phone has been on for several days straight without a reboot.
Step 7: Confirm Whether the Game’s Servers Are Down
Sometimes it really isn’t your fault. If you can, wait to see if the game is experiencing a widespread error by checking its official social media accounts (Twitter/X is the quickest way and not for everyone. But be sure to click all the latest links) or maybe even something like Down Detector.
I spent almost 30 minutes trying to fix my machine once, when the actual server outage (unrelated to me) occurred. Checking this first would’ve saved me all that time. You can also read:
- Why GPU Prices Stay High Even When New Cards Launch, and Who Benefits From It
- What Happens to a Game You Bought When the Servers Shut Down
Step 8: Reinstall As A Last Resort
Uninstall, then reinstall. This truly is, if nothing else fixes the problem, the last resort you will want to try, not the first thing you should attempt. Before removing, however, be sure your account is registered to your e-mail, Google account, or Game Center.
I came to this lesson the hard way once already with a different game where I hadn’t linked my account and uninstalling erased weeks of progress. So from then on I always triple check account linking before I uninstall anything.
A Real Example From My Own Experience
The 11-minutes “loading screen I spoke of” was actually due to dual factors: My storage space was less than 500MB free space left (almost full!) And my WiFi was flimsily disconnecting and reconnecting, while I remained oblivious because I still had “bar energy”.
I recovered approximately 4GB of storage space by removing useless apps and old downloaded videos, used mobile data for a moment and the game opened after approximately 10 seconds. 10 seconds after 11 min of frustration and a few unnecessary reinstalls.
An Unexpected Link: It Can Also Trigger This Also
This one took me by surprise. I was playing a game on a particularly warm afternoon when I noticed my phone was getting pretty hot and, not long after, a game started getting stuck loading in a very troubling way that eerily resembled my previous storage trouble.
It also turns out that if your phone is too hot, it’ll cut back on all background processes, including whatever it is that’s happening while that loading screen is playing out, and that can actually cause the thing to get stuck. As soon as I let my phone cool off, the same game loaded just fine.
5 Mistakes People Often Make
- Clearing app data and cache, both. This logs you out of apps and deletes other personal data but does not improve performance.
- Always assuming it’s a server problem. It can be, but it’s far more likely to be the actual problem is sitting on your own machine.
- Neglect the storage space until about to be filled. Games need some breathing room to actually be able to download all the assets you need to load into.
- Reinstall straight away, no account link check. You could lose everything if you haven’t backed up your account beforehand.
- Showing your internet is working, but really just looking at signal strength. Which is not always indicative of a good, working connection.
As a Final Note
A seemingly frozen loading screen is hopeless when it’s sitting in front of your face, but you can usually recover from this situation unless you know exactly what is happening behind the scenes. For me, storage space and a flaky WiFi point that showed full bars… Most definitely connected.
Next time this occurs, take the steps below in order rather than rushing to removing all apps. Verify your connection, clear the cache only, make sure you have enough storage, and do a full restart of your phone before jumping to worst case.
Usually, the fix only takes a matter of a few minutes once you actually know what you are looking for, and you won’t have to wait for a frozen progress bar to get you up to speed as to what happened.
If you’re still having issues, Google’s official Play Store troubleshooting guide is a good place to turn to for official steps to resolve problems with the app.
