Android phones tips and tricks

 

20 Android Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most From Your Phone

Android is a strikingly strong, creative versatile working framework that habitually jumps Apple's iOS in new innovation support. 5G, NFC installment, custom consoles… the rundown goes on. However, all of that cutting edge usefulness makes for a perplexing, rambling OS. At the superficial, the connection point is basic enough for easygoing clients — who simply need to message, settle on decisions, and utilize their applications — yet secret a layer or two somewhere down in the point of interaction are a wide range of force client settings and devices. You simply need to know where to look.
We believe that you should have the option to utilize Google's portable OS like a chief, and our rundown of ideas and easy routes can assist you with doing precisely that. These are just a portion of the manners in which you can exploit the Google's OS — there's such a profound rundown of highlights that you'll presumably view as more. Make certain to look at our rundown of the best Android applications, as well, and go ahead and toll in on our remarks area at the lower part of the article. We might add them to future updates of this story!

1. Uninstall Apps You Don’t Need

Most Android phones come with a healthy helping of preinstalled apps. Many will be welcomed by nearly everyone—maps, email, browser, and so on—but there are undoubtedly some you don’t want or need. If you’re just not a podcast person, you don’t need a podcast app. And phone vendors tend to include a bunch of their own apps that you may never need to use. Simply long-press an app’s icon and then select the i entry to get to its detail page where you can uninstall it.

Unfortunately, there are some stock apps you cannot uninstall. For example, if you only use Firefox or Edge as your web browser, you still can't uninstall Google’s Chrome browser. For those apps, you can at least choose Disable, which will hide them from the interface and free up system resources.

2. Use Digital Wellbeing Features

It’s not the healthiest thing in the world to stay up all night texting and doomscrolling(Opens in a new window). Android 11’s Bedtime mode is part of the Digital Wellbeing feature. Not only does it silence your phone at a set time, it also changes the screen to black-and-white, in case you do have to look at the screen after hours. There’s a Pause option in the dropdown menu if you need more time before retiring. If you're looking for more sleep tips, you should read our feature on how tech can help (and hurt) your sleep.

Another recommended Wellbeing feature is Focus mode, which silences noisy apps’ notifications. Some phones, including recent Pixels and Motorolas, turn on Do Not Disturb mode when you set them down with the screen facing down—a quick and easy way to get relief from disturbances. Finally, using Work Profile hides all those productivity apps when it’s time to relax.

3. Set Up the Your Phone App in Windows

I suspect that the vast majority who use Mac work areas or PCs are additionally doubtlessly utilizing an iPhone, which offers stupendous mix with macOS. Be that as it may, with the Your Phone work area application for Windows 10, Android clients can get the same amount of progression with their PC — maybe considerably more. Beginning arrangement from your PC is most straightforward. Go to the Setting's application's Phone segment, pick Add a Phone, and you're making excellent progress so far. You'll have the option to settle on decisions, send messages, and immediately see and use photographs from the telephone on your PC.

Late Samsung gadgets and the Surface Duo telephone get much more prospects with the Link to Windows choice, including running numerous Android applications on the work area in the Your Phone application. In the event that you're not running Windows, you can get Android messages on the web — one more capacity annoyingly not presented by Apple's portable OS. You can likewise run Android applications in an emulator on one or the other Windows or macOS, however that course isn't quite as advantageous as Windows 10's Your Phone.

4. Edit Quick Settings

One thing I’m not crazy about in Android is that the Quick Settings require two swipes to show more than one row—and even after you do that, you still have two pages of them. You can make sure that the settings you need most often are there in the first swipe-down row. Just hit the pencil icon, and you can add useful tools like Focus mode or Dark mode switches.

5. Install Apps From the Web

For me, this is one of the coolest advantages of Android over iOS: You don’t have to have your phone in your hand to install an app on it. Just go to the Google Play(Opens in a new window) store in your web browser and you can remotely install any app or game, as long as you’re signed in to the same Google account the phone uses. If you have multiple Android devices under your account, you’ll see them listed when you go to install. It’s a great convenience for when you discover an app at your computer and don’t want to fumble with your phone to get the app on it.

6. Install Apps From Other Sources

One of Android's distinctly open features is that, unlike on iOS, you’re not restricted to using one company’s app store. Most users will find every app they want on Google’s Play store—and there are worthwhile protections that come along with that. If, however, you need something that’s not in there, nothing is stopping you from heading to Amazon’s app store, your phone maker’s app store, or even downloading the app and installing it as an APK (the extension for an Android Application Package file).

One important note: If you do go this route, be absolutely sure that you’re getting the app from a reliable source, since third-party app stores are the number-one source of Android malware. Do some research first! Also be sure to turn off the Install Unknown Apps setting for the source after you install the app you want, just in case.

One example of why you might want to sideload (that is, install outside of the official app store) an app is the mega-popular game Fortnite. Android users can go to the game maker’s site to get the APK, while iPhone users who want to install the game for the first time are simply out of luck. You can read about the process in PCMag’s article about how to play Fortnite on Android.

7. Install a Launcher App

This is one customization type iPhone users don’t get: You can change the basic start screen on your phone by installing a third-party launcher app from the Play Store. A couple noteworthy launchers are Action Launcher, Apex, the cleverly named Lawn Chair, Lightning, the Microsoft Launcher, Nova, Niagara, and Smart Launcher.

8. Customize Message Notifications

Android 11 lets you choose message notifications so that some contacts are more prominent, and conversations stay together. You can now set messages to appear on top of any other running apps as bubbles. You simply turn them on in Settings and set the contact to Priority. Within a notification there's another setting for Bubbles with three options: All Conversations Can Bubble, Selected Conversations Can Bubble, and Nothing Can Bubble.

9. Add Widgets and Customize Home

iOS just got the ability to add widgets to the home screen with version 14. Android users have been able to do this for ages, but not everyone knows how. All you have to do is simply long-press on the home screen, choose Widgets, and then pick from the selection made available by any apps installed on their phones. Long-pressing on the Home screen also gives you other customization options, such as removing the Google feed page to the left of the Home screen or to disabling screen rotation for the Home screen—which we would never do, because it’s cool to see your home screen in landscape.

10. Beef Up Storage

A major advantage of Android over iPhones is that some phone models allow you to increase storage with a microSD card. Not only does this let you store more media and apps on your phone, but it also offers a way to transfer large amounts of file data between your phone and other devices. Another advantage is that you can plug some Android phones into an external USB storage drive and browse its files. If your phone has a USB-C port, you can simply plug in a USB flash memory drive with a Type-C connection.