Adafruit ESP32-S3 Manual page 202

very likely you will at some point get the board into an odd state that makes it too
confused to bootload.
A lot of beginners have a little freakout the first time this happens, they think the
board is ruined or 'bricked' - it's almost certainly not, it is just crashed and/or
confused. You may need to perform a little trick to get the board back into a
good state, at which point you won't need to manually bootload again.
Before continuing we really, really suggest turning on Verbose Upload messages, it
will help in this process because you will be able to see what the IDE is trying to do.
It's a checkbox in the Preferences menu.
Enter Manual Bootload Mode
OK now you know it's probably time to try manual bootloading. No problem! Here is
how you do that for this board:
• Press and hold the boot button.
• While holding the boot button, press and release the reset button.
• Release the boot button.
You're now in the bootloader!
Once you are in manual bootload mode, go to the Tools menu, and make sure you
have selected the bootloader serial port. It is almost certain that the serial port has
changed now that the bootloader is enabled
©Adafruit Industries Page 202 of 263