Android Settings You Should Change Now
maybe you've been using Android for years or maybe you just recently switched to it and in both cases there are so many little settings that you probably don't know about but it really should they might have to do with the security of privacy or are just plain useful so today we're going to go over 13 settings in Android that you should really change right away and before we get started let I just quickly plug my twitter I try to put good stuff on there every day it's just a co Joe if you're interested but anyway let's just jump right in we'll start off with some privacy and security settings because I think those are the most important the first one will stop Google from using your personal information to advertise to you you just go to settings Google ads and then enable the option to opt-out of AD personalization.
and you'll still see ads but they will no longer target you based on search history and interests next we want to go to the security settings and this menu might be named something a little bit different depending on your phone manufacturer and Android version but you should be able to figure it out so once you're there you go to screen lock settings then the gear and look for the setting for power button instantly locks and set that on otherwise even if you turn off the screen the phone will not be locked right away so if someone snatches your phone out of your hand they can still, get in without your password you may also want to change the automatically lock setting which makes it so the screen doesn't lock right away if the screen time's out I like to keep this on five seconds in case.
I'm reading something and it turns off too soon but I definitely want it to lock if I actually press the power button myself here's another one for a lock screen security this time you want to go to the actual Google app and then go to the menu and then settings voice and then look for okay Google detection and disable where it says trusted voice this feature makes it so your lock screen can be bypassed if it hears your voice but obviously it's not perfect and not secure at all in fact I've seen it where my phone would unlock when I was talking and I didn't even say okay Google so I wouldn't trust this at all definitely number four is the SIM card lock setting which is very important but not many know about it so to enable it again go to the settings then security and setup sim card lock.
but don't do anything with it just yet before I explain so this setting will protect your SIM card and make it so anytime you turn on your phone you'll have to type in a pin this way even if someone steals your phone and tastes out your SIM card and puts it into another phone they can't use it without that SIM card PIN otherwise, they could do things like use your cell data see your phone number and even make calls from your number and potentially see billing data so obviously we want to enable this when you hit enable it might ask you for the current ping if you don't remember setting it up don't get you only have three tries instead, look to see what your cell phone carrier default SIM PIN is for example AT&T; S is one one one one if you get it wrong three times your
SIM card will be locked temporarily and you will need to go to your cell phone carriers website or call them to get what's called a puck code to unlock it again but if the default pin doesn't work you might need to get that code anyway but the good news is even if you temporarily log the SIM card when you type in the park the code you can now set your own pin and in any case, this is all good even if it's a little bit difficult because after you set the pin you don't want some thief being able to easily guess your code a bunch of times alright next up a number five we want to make sure that we can track our phone if it does get stolen by enabling Android device manager so in the settings go to Google security Android device manager and make sure both of these options are enabled to be able to remotely locate and wipe your device if you need to on newer phones these should be enabled by default
but you'll want to double-check another a place to check is in settings security which is not the same as the security the menu we just looked at then device administrators and make sure Android device a manager is enabled in there now if your phone is ever lost you can log into your Google account and use the Find My Phone feature moving on the next few are pretty quick and easy go-to settings notifications click the gear though it might look a little bit different on other phones remember and then find the setting for on the lock screen this one is personal preference whether you want to change it if you select hide sensitive content it makes it so for certain apps like text messages notification on the lock screen will not show the content of the message only show which app it is so if you tend to be around a a lot of prying eyes all day this might be the one to pick and you can even have it does not show any notifications at all on the lock screen but that one is a bit extreme alright number seven I think we're on is NFC or near field communication go to wireless and networks and you might have to click more.
and then you can see the option to enable or disable NFC this one basically allows your phone to communicate with other NFC devices you put it next to one example is if you use Android pay and you hold your phone up to a cash register but for the most part I don't think many people use this at all or at least very rarely and on some phones, it can really affect battery life and there have apparently been demonstrations of hacks that can take advantage of NFC at a distance so I would just keep this disabled until you need it on to number eight this one is pretty useful for anyone with a cellular data cap which is probably most people in the settings you go to data usage and see where it says cellular data usage and Click the gear this allows you to tell your phone when your billing cycle resets and also provide a data threshold to warn you when you get close to that limit or stop you from going over altogether and if you have unlimited data you can actually, turn the warning off.
so it doesn't ever annoy you pretty useful if you're worried about getting overcharged or something next up we have a cool one but we have to unable to developer settings to get to it but if you don't have that enabled don't worry just go to settings about the zone and look where it says build the number and just tap that a bunch of times until it says you're a developer now you'll see a new menu under settings that say developer options so go there and scroll down until you see options for animation scale there should be a few of them, this changes how fast or slow animations on your phone are such as switching between apps if you set these to 0.5 X they will now be twice as fast because 0.5 X means 1/2 the time so this just kind of makes your phone feel a little bit more snappy and especially on newer phones allows you to navigate in apps a lot faster I think it's worth trying out you might like it but just be careful if you set it to one of the really slow settings it'll take forever to disable again because you have to wait for number 10 the infamous autocorrect and there are actually a few keyboard settings we can adjust.
here but I'll just group them into one I'm going to assume you're using the Google keyboard but other keyboards should have similar settings to these so let's go to settings language and input virtual keyboard then text correction look for where it says auto-correction and I personally like that to be disabled so it doesn't ever change what I type but you can also always keep show suggestions enabled to make it easy still to fix typos also some people might find that if you disable the suggest contact names and personalized suggestion settings the keyboard works a lot faster so I would probably try disabling those if you don't need them also, in addition, another one to disable is blocked offensive words I'm pretty sure if you're an adult you can handle seeing some swear words every once in a while but we're not done with a Google keyboard just yet go back to the G board keyboard settings and click advanced you'll probably want to disable the options for share usage statistics and share snippets which sends information to Google about what you type I don't know about you.
but I don't think I want that all right we're on a number 11 this one actually is a chrome a feature that not a lot of people know about so open up chrome click the menu the icon then settings and click on where it says data saver what this does is has Google compress web pages for you before sending them to your phone this could be useful in at least two cases like if you have a data cap you'll useless data and if you have a slow connection site will load faster because there will be less to load it won't be able to do it on encrypted sites obviously but it's better than nothing and it will even show you how much data you've used and saved over time from the feature coming near the end we have a couple more chrome settings that I think you'll like the first up is a relatively new feature called chrome home that is not enabled by default you can find it in the hidden flags menu and if you don't know about that just go to the navigation bar and type in Chrome colon slash flags this will bring up a whole bunch of advanced experimental and developer settings so now press the menu icon and then click find in page and type in a home which should bring you to an option called chrome home Android switch that from default to enabled and then click the button to restart chrome and you'll notice it looks a little bit different instead of the navigation bar being at the top it's now at the bottom which means you don't have to reach so far to use it also if you swipe up.
there's a new home bar I guess you could call it which has quick links to recent downloads bookmarks and history it might also show you some relevant news pages obviously you might not liked having the bar at the bottom but I think it's easy to get used to and having the extra quick length is really convenient and finally, we have a new chrome feature that solves one of those annoying things about mobile web browsing which is when you try to read a web page the whole thing keeps jumping as stuff keeps loading Google recently introduced a new feature called scroll anchoring which again can be found by going to Chrome colon slash flags and then Search for the word anchor then where it says scroll anchoring change it from default to enable and with this feature, you might not even realize it's working because obviously when it is nothing happens and it probably won't work every time but you should hopefully see page jump happening a lot less often now oh and you can enable the setting on the desktop version of Chrome as well so that's it a bunch of settings for Android that I think will make your life easier and at least a little bit more secure you can let us know down the comments if there are any big ones that I missed.
and maybe I'll go over them in the future video if you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here you can just click on those and if you want to subscribe I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday again you can follow me on Twitter as well if you want so I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys I'll see you next time have a good one.
and you'll still see ads but they will no longer target you based on search history and interests next we want to go to the security settings and this menu might be named something a little bit different depending on your phone manufacturer and Android version but you should be able to figure it out so once you're there you go to screen lock settings then the gear and look for the setting for power button instantly locks and set that on otherwise even if you turn off the screen the phone will not be locked right away so if someone snatches your phone out of your hand they can still, get in without your password you may also want to change the automatically lock setting which makes it so the screen doesn't lock right away if the screen time's out I like to keep this on five seconds in case.
I'm reading something and it turns off too soon but I definitely want it to lock if I actually press the power button myself here's another one for a lock screen security this time you want to go to the actual Google app and then go to the menu and then settings voice and then look for okay Google detection and disable where it says trusted voice this feature makes it so your lock screen can be bypassed if it hears your voice but obviously it's not perfect and not secure at all in fact I've seen it where my phone would unlock when I was talking and I didn't even say okay Google so I wouldn't trust this at all definitely number four is the SIM card lock setting which is very important but not many know about it so to enable it again go to the settings then security and setup sim card lock.
but don't do anything with it just yet before I explain so this setting will protect your SIM card and make it so anytime you turn on your phone you'll have to type in a pin this way even if someone steals your phone and tastes out your SIM card and puts it into another phone they can't use it without that SIM card PIN otherwise, they could do things like use your cell data see your phone number and even make calls from your number and potentially see billing data so obviously we want to enable this when you hit enable it might ask you for the current ping if you don't remember setting it up don't get you only have three tries instead, look to see what your cell phone carrier default SIM PIN is for example AT&T; S is one one one one if you get it wrong three times your
SIM card will be locked temporarily and you will need to go to your cell phone carriers website or call them to get what's called a puck code to unlock it again but if the default pin doesn't work you might need to get that code anyway but the good news is even if you temporarily log the SIM card when you type in the park the code you can now set your own pin and in any case, this is all good even if it's a little bit difficult because after you set the pin you don't want some thief being able to easily guess your code a bunch of times alright next up a number five we want to make sure that we can track our phone if it does get stolen by enabling Android device manager so in the settings go to Google security Android device manager and make sure both of these options are enabled to be able to remotely locate and wipe your device if you need to on newer phones these should be enabled by default
but you'll want to double-check another a place to check is in settings security which is not the same as the security the menu we just looked at then device administrators and make sure Android device a manager is enabled in there now if your phone is ever lost you can log into your Google account and use the Find My Phone feature moving on the next few are pretty quick and easy go-to settings notifications click the gear though it might look a little bit different on other phones remember and then find the setting for on the lock screen this one is personal preference whether you want to change it if you select hide sensitive content it makes it so for certain apps like text messages notification on the lock screen will not show the content of the message only show which app it is so if you tend to be around a a lot of prying eyes all day this might be the one to pick and you can even have it does not show any notifications at all on the lock screen but that one is a bit extreme alright number seven I think we're on is NFC or near field communication go to wireless and networks and you might have to click more.
and then you can see the option to enable or disable NFC this one basically allows your phone to communicate with other NFC devices you put it next to one example is if you use Android pay and you hold your phone up to a cash register but for the most part I don't think many people use this at all or at least very rarely and on some phones, it can really affect battery life and there have apparently been demonstrations of hacks that can take advantage of NFC at a distance so I would just keep this disabled until you need it on to number eight this one is pretty useful for anyone with a cellular data cap which is probably most people in the settings you go to data usage and see where it says cellular data usage and Click the gear this allows you to tell your phone when your billing cycle resets and also provide a data threshold to warn you when you get close to that limit or stop you from going over altogether and if you have unlimited data you can actually, turn the warning off.
so it doesn't ever annoy you pretty useful if you're worried about getting overcharged or something next up we have a cool one but we have to unable to developer settings to get to it but if you don't have that enabled don't worry just go to settings about the zone and look where it says build the number and just tap that a bunch of times until it says you're a developer now you'll see a new menu under settings that say developer options so go there and scroll down until you see options for animation scale there should be a few of them, this changes how fast or slow animations on your phone are such as switching between apps if you set these to 0.5 X they will now be twice as fast because 0.5 X means 1/2 the time so this just kind of makes your phone feel a little bit more snappy and especially on newer phones allows you to navigate in apps a lot faster I think it's worth trying out you might like it but just be careful if you set it to one of the really slow settings it'll take forever to disable again because you have to wait for number 10 the infamous autocorrect and there are actually a few keyboard settings we can adjust.
here but I'll just group them into one I'm going to assume you're using the Google keyboard but other keyboards should have similar settings to these so let's go to settings language and input virtual keyboard then text correction look for where it says auto-correction and I personally like that to be disabled so it doesn't ever change what I type but you can also always keep show suggestions enabled to make it easy still to fix typos also some people might find that if you disable the suggest contact names and personalized suggestion settings the keyboard works a lot faster so I would probably try disabling those if you don't need them also, in addition, another one to disable is blocked offensive words I'm pretty sure if you're an adult you can handle seeing some swear words every once in a while but we're not done with a Google keyboard just yet go back to the G board keyboard settings and click advanced you'll probably want to disable the options for share usage statistics and share snippets which sends information to Google about what you type I don't know about you.
but I don't think I want that all right we're on a number 11 this one actually is a chrome a feature that not a lot of people know about so open up chrome click the menu the icon then settings and click on where it says data saver what this does is has Google compress web pages for you before sending them to your phone this could be useful in at least two cases like if you have a data cap you'll useless data and if you have a slow connection site will load faster because there will be less to load it won't be able to do it on encrypted sites obviously but it's better than nothing and it will even show you how much data you've used and saved over time from the feature coming near the end we have a couple more chrome settings that I think you'll like the first up is a relatively new feature called chrome home that is not enabled by default you can find it in the hidden flags menu and if you don't know about that just go to the navigation bar and type in Chrome colon slash flags this will bring up a whole bunch of advanced experimental and developer settings so now press the menu icon and then click find in page and type in a home which should bring you to an option called chrome home Android switch that from default to enabled and then click the button to restart chrome and you'll notice it looks a little bit different instead of the navigation bar being at the top it's now at the bottom which means you don't have to reach so far to use it also if you swipe up.
there's a new home bar I guess you could call it which has quick links to recent downloads bookmarks and history it might also show you some relevant news pages obviously you might not liked having the bar at the bottom but I think it's easy to get used to and having the extra quick length is really convenient and finally, we have a new chrome feature that solves one of those annoying things about mobile web browsing which is when you try to read a web page the whole thing keeps jumping as stuff keeps loading Google recently introduced a new feature called scroll anchoring which again can be found by going to Chrome colon slash flags and then Search for the word anchor then where it says scroll anchoring change it from default to enable and with this feature, you might not even realize it's working because obviously when it is nothing happens and it probably won't work every time but you should hopefully see page jump happening a lot less often now oh and you can enable the setting on the desktop version of Chrome as well so that's it a bunch of settings for Android that I think will make your life easier and at least a little bit more secure you can let us know down the comments if there are any big ones that I missed.
and maybe I'll go over them in the future video if you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here you can just click on those and if you want to subscribe I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday again you can follow me on Twitter as well if you want so I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys I'll see you next time have a good one.
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