You don't always find everything you need to know in the user manual ¬ plus, who reads that thing anyway? If you want to find out more about some hidden tips and tricks for your Android smartphone/tablet device, read this non-exhaustive list.
Quickly access notification settings
Too many notifications can become irritating after some time. Tap and hold on a notification in the drop down notification bar.
This will show you a Setting icon next to the notification -- tap on the icon to open up the Notification settings of that particular app.
From here, you can adjust them or turn them off completely.
High contrast text
Reading text on a smartphone screen can be be difficult for people with weak vision. Often, light grey text tends to merge with the background making it difficult to read.
An easy way to solve this issue is by enabling high contrast text from Settings > Accessibility. Once enabled, you can instantly see the text appear crisper and easy to read.
Smart lock
For security reasons, everyone should set up a lockscreen password on their smartphone. But it gets tedious to enter it each time. With the smart lock function, you can have the phone unlocked when its safe with you in your home. Go to security > Smart Lock and add your home location to trusted places. You can also add a Bluetooth de vice (like a speaker or trusted device.)
Once you do this, your phone will not ask for a lock password when it detects that you are at home or if you are connected to one of the trusted devices.
Find a silent phone
Did you switch off your phone ringer and misplace the phone? Since its on silent, even calling it from another number might not help. The simple way out is to head to www.google.com/android/devicemanagerand login with the same Google ID as the phone.
Here, you can view the location of your phone and send a signal to ring loudly -even with the ringer off.
Custom reject SMS
Go to Settings > Phone or open up the dialer and access the phone settings. In the menu, you will see a Reject with SMS option.
In this setting, you can remove or edit any or all of the pre-set messages to be sent when you reject an incoming call.
Increase interface speed
Head to settings > About Phone and tap 7 times on the 'Build Number' menu. This will enable Developer Options in settings. Here, scroll down to settings for Window and Transition Animation scale.
By default, the value of animation is set to 1x. Reduce it to 0.5x to improve the speed. You can also turn the animations off to further improve the speed.
Stop automatic shortcuts
Each time you install a new app from the Play Store, a shortcut icon is placed on the home screen. If you don't want that to happen, open the Play Store, tap on the three bars on the top left and open Settings.
Here, you will see an option called 'Add icon to Home Screen' -- simply uncheck the box to disable automatic shortcut placement.
(source:techgig)
(source:techgig)
