How Do I Reset My Mavic Mini Drone

How Do I Reset My Mavic Mini Drone?

When it comes to your Mavic Mini drone, there are a couple of things that it can and can’t do. After a while of using the mini, you might decide to upgrade your drone to a more advanced and detailed camera set or maybe a drone with a faster speed to capture high action.

Whatever your reasoning, resetting your drone is an important step to keeping your data safe. 

Today I’m going to explain why resetting your drone is important and how to do it.

Why Might You Want To Do A Factory Reset On Your Mavic Mini Drone?

There are two main reasons to do a factory reset on your Mavic Mini, the first is to eliminate a computer virus, and the second is to remove your data before selling the drone to someone else.

If you have a computer virus on your drone, then a factory reset will mean you lose all your data, but the virus is removed too. Once you restore the drone, it should go back to its original capabilities.

If you want to sell your drone, you don’t want the new user to find your photos or videos and claim them as their own, then a factory reset will eliminate this possibility. 

If you are a professional drone photographer, this could be a copy-right issue. But if you use drones for personal entertainment, then it could be a personal information infringement.

Your images are a copy of your likeness, which you are inherently entitled to. The new owner could sell images of you without your permission or knowledge, causing you to miss out on payments.

A simple factory reset will remove any data that has been left behind, removing these copy-right issues.

How To Do A Factory Reset On Your Mavic Mini Drone?

A factory reset is a basic hardware function that most technologies have ready to use, however on the 4th of February 2020, DJI Support’s twitter feed confirmed that there is no factory reset option for the Mavic Mini. You can find the tweet here.

When asked why they refused to allow their customer the ability to clear away viruses and remove their data, DJI Support did not respond. 

Because they did not respond, all we can do is speculate. It could be that DJI made a terrible error in their design of the Mavic Mini and has refused to make amends for it.

Or, and this is my theory, DJI does not want their customers to resell their product. So to discourage this behavior, they did not include the one detail that allows you to wipe all of your data from the hardware. 

Until DJI explains their reason, we will not know why DJI didn’t include a factory reset option on the Mavic Mini.

How To Rest The Camera Setting Back To The Default Settings?

Although there is no factory reset option, you can set your camera back to its original default settings. This means that if you did have a virus that stopped you from editing your camera settings, you could use this default setting to bring the original camera style back.

This also means that if you accidentally get confused with your drone setting and need to get back to the original (and often better) camera design, you can do this too. 

To do this, you need to click on “Camera” and select “Advanced Settings.” You will then be given a bunch more options. You need to scroll until you reach “Reset Camera Settings.” Give that button a tap, and your camera will go back to its default settings.

You can find this information on page 34 of the Mavic Mini User Manual or by clicking here, which takes you to the PDF version. 

What Is The Difference Between A Factory Reset And A Normal Reset? 

So I went on a bit of a rant earlier about how Mavic Mini doesn’t have a factory reset button but then explained you could possibly get rid of a camera virus by resetting the default camera settings.

That kind of turnaround could give you whiplash if you aren’t sure what the difference between the two is. Let me explain. 

A factory reset removes all the data from the device in question, and the device then restarts with only the basic functions it could have. Basically, it goes back to how it was when the device was in the manufacturing factory. This type of reset cleans the system entirely.

A normal reset will not remove your data. It will bring you back to its original state or even its last saved state. This means if you like to use Automatic Mode and you set your Mavic Mini to automatically use Automatic Mode, even when you reset your camera settings, it will still recognize that you like this feature.

This means it will log in its data somewhere that you often ask to use this feature. Your data is still stored, even though your settings were reset.

Best Way To Remove Your Data From Your Mavic Mini?

So if you cannot remove your data from your Mavic Mini, what can you do instead? The best thing to do is save all of your data onto an SD card and not save anything to the drone itself. Then, when it is time to sell, remove the SD card.

This will allow you to save the pictures and videos and remove the contents from the drone, which means that when you sell your Mavic Mini, the next person shouldn’t be able to see your content.

However, even though your content has been removed, the following user will have your history of setting changes logged into the drone still. Unfortunately, that cannot be removed without a factory reset.

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