Ah, January. It’s the proper time to step again, take inventory of your digital life, and set your self up for a 12 months filled with pleasure-producing productiveness.Oh, and also you additionally would possibly make just a few overly formidable resolutions everyone knows you will not maintain.But meaningless guarantees apart, that “stepping back” stuff can really make a significant distinction — and right here within the land o’ Android, whether or not you are palming a shiny new system or attempting to take advantage of a trusty previous companion, a handful of easy steps can go an impressively good distance in enhancing your expertise.Here, particularly, are seven superior changes value revisiting on no matter cellphone you are utilizing — changes which can be all too simple to neglect about and fail to maintain up with over time.[Psst: Love shortcuts? My Android Shortcut Supercourse will teach you tons of time-saving tricks for your phone. Sign up now for free!]Android adjustment No. 1: Give your self the present of gesturesIt’s 20-frickin’-23, for cryin’ out loud — and but, an incredibly excessive variety of Android-adoring animals I encounter are nonetheless utilizing the long-dated legacy button system for getting round their Googley gadgets. That three-key setup harkens again to the period of Android 8, manner again within the prehistoric days of 2017. Google shifted to a gesture-based system quickly after, and following a barely rocky begin, it is advanced into a cultured, intuitive, and impressively nice solution to get round any cellphone you are carrying. JRThe drawback is that sure Android device-makers are caught previously and nonetheless sticking you with the previous legacy setup by default. It’s clunkier, much less modern, and rather more limiting when it comes to the options and potentialities it affords. If you are utilizing a cellphone that did not include Android’s gesture system enabled out of the field, do your self an enormous favor and take 12 seconds to change your self over to the platform’s present normal:
Open up your cellphone’s settings, by swiping down twice from the highest of the display and tapping the gear-shaped icon within the panel that seems.
Search the settings space for the phrase navigation.
Look for the choice labeled “Navigation type” (or one thing vaguely alongside these strains).
Tap that, then change its setting to “Swipe gestures” (or no matter equal your cellphone presents).
Now, be warned: It’ll take just a few days to get used to this new method. Don’t surrender instantly! Give your self every week or two, look over my assortment of ideas for taking advantage of Android gestures — and as soon as the novelty wears off, I’d be prepared to wager you will not wish to return.Android adjustment No. 2: Get smarter system appsAnother adjustment for the non-Pixel-owning buddies amongst us: Phone-makers outdoors of Google like to lard up their gadgets with subpar, superfluous copies of the identical fundamental apps Google creates. With uncommon exception, these apps are much less intuitive to make use of, much less totally featured, and fewer persistently designed than Google’s equivalents. They are typically extra about preserving you in that one Android phone-maker’s ecosystem than something — and so they typically include some fairly eyebrow-raising asterisks, too.So whether or not your cellphone is new or not, have a look at disabling these default doodads and changing ’em with the Google-made options — the identical apps that’d come preinstalled by default if you happen to have been utilizing a Google-made cellphone. Specifically:
Switching over to the Google Contacts app gives you a superior all-around expertise and the power to simply entry your contacts from wherever — cellphone, pc, or any system the place you check in, regardless of who made it and with none antiquated steps or guide syncing required.
The Google Phone app consists of some supremely useful spam-blocking smarts together with an interface that matches proper into the remainder of Google’s ecosystem-wide design — and, notably, does not embody any of the data-selling shenanigans different firms quietly bake into their variations.
The Google Messages app serves up essentially the most safe and feature-rich texting expertise accessible on Android, with a wonderfully easy system for cross-device entry on any pc in entrance of you.
And Google Photos is a much more efficient model of your cellphone’s Gallery app, with superior enhancing instruments and a local syncing system that’ll maintain all of your photographs backed up and accessible in all places.
Android adjustment No. 3: Customize your Quick Settings setupMost of us are likely to focus our psychological power on Android’s residence display, however let me allow you to in on a saucy little secret: Your cellphone’s really acquired a second launchpad-like setting that is available from wherever on the system. It’s simply as simple to customise, and with about 4 minutes of effort, it might grow to be a useful efficiency-enhancer on your particular wants.I’m talkin’ about Android’s Quick Settings space — the panel of tile-like choices that exhibits up once you swipe down from the highest of your display. You’d be forgiven for forgetting, however these choices are laughably simple to regulate:
Start by swiping down twice from the highest of your cellphone’s display — then faucet the pencil-shaped icon on a Pixel cellphone or faucet the three-dot menu icon adopted by “Edit buttons” on a Samsung system.
You can then contact and maintain any icon in sight to maneuver it to a kind of distinguished place and even drag it utterly out of your energetic Quick Settings space…
And yow will discover oodles of unused icons (on the very backside of the display, with Pixels, or on the high on a Samsung cellphone) and drag ’em into the energetic space to make ’em seen.
JRNow, for the actually cool half: You can even add all types of additional powers into that space and make ’em immediately accessible from wherever in your cellphone with a single swipe — it doesn’t matter what else you could be doing. Check out my listing of six such distinctive choices, together with a intelligent floating calculator, an on-demand app launcher, and a dead-simple inbox memo machine on your cellphone.Android adjustment No. 4: Take management of your system soundsFor all of the progress Google’s made on syncing settings and simplifying the Android setup course of, one space that is vexingly nonetheless on you to arrange with each new cellphone is your system sound choice.From the fundamentals like your ringtone to some super-intricate choices just like the sounds you get for notifications (and even particular kinds of notifications), an ocean of potentialities is on the market and ready to be embraced. And taking the time to set it up as soon as, with any cellphone you are utilizing, will make it meaningfully simpler to know precisely what kind of alert is demanding your consideration with out having to look.Head into the Sound & Vibration part of your system settings to get began with the fundamentals — then mosey your manner over to the Notifications part to seek out and customise all of the accessible sounds for each app you have acquired put in.Be positive to look intently, too, ‘trigger with apps like Google Messages and even Slack, you possibly can set totally different sounds for various contacts and conversations — a robust risk, if you happen to bear in mind to get it configured.Android adjustment No. 5: Make your notifications extra effectiveSpeaking of notifications, one other space that does not usually carry over from one cellphone to the following is your set of non-public preferences for the way several types of notifications are dealt with — and that is one in all Android’s only and sanity-saving benefits.For the following few days, consider carefully about each single notification that exhibits up in your cellphone. Do you actually need that notification? Would you moderately not obtain it and have it cluttering up your cellphone’s notification panel? Or possibly wouldn’t it be higher to look as a silent, minimized notification so it is there and accessible so that you can discover however not one thing that interrupts you and actively calls for your consideration?With any notification you wish to regulate, simply press and maintain it, then search for both the “Settings” textual content or the gear-shaped icon inside it. That’ll take you a treasure trove of choices for tweaking how that particular kind of notification works. You can flip it off fully, change it to a silent notification, reduce it right into a smaller notification, or — on the flip aspect — set it to override Do Not Disturb so that you by no means danger lacking it. JRAndroid adjustment No. 6: Improve your notification memoryAlso with regards to notifications, Android’s had a nifty native system for accessing your notification historical past since 2020’s Android 11 replace. But on most gadgets, it is as much as you to seek out and allow the choice earlier than it will be accessible. And this, too, is a step you will usually need to carry out on each new system you employ.Thankfully, it could not be a lot simpler to do:
Slide again into the Notifications part of your system settings.
If you are utilizing a Samsung cellphone, bop your self uponst the highest of your noggin after which faucet “Advanced settings.”
Tap the road labeled “Notification history.”
Make positive the toggle subsequent to “Use notification history” (or “On,” with Samsung) is within the on place on the display that comes up subsequent.
Then, anytime you wish to revisit notifications you have dismissed, both mosey your manner again to that very same space of your settings to seek out ’em — or search for the “History” possibility on the backside of your notification panel for a shortcut to get there.(That possibility, moderately vexingly, is not at all times current. It often exhibits up solely when you have got no less than one notification pending. But you possibly can at all times get to the complete historical past manually by going by way of your system settings.)Android adjustment No. 7: Simplify your smartphone securityLast however not least on our listing is one ultimate step-saver that requires guide activation on each new system you employ. And boy, is it ‘un.It’s Google’s Smart Lock system for simplified cellphone sign-ins. Once it is energetic, you possibly can decide to have your cellphone maintain itself unlocked and never require the usual authentication steps everytime you’re in a recognized and trusted location or linked to a recognized Bluetooth system — like your automotive audio system, your smartwatch, or your earbuds.All you have gotta do to get the system going is head into your cellphone’s settings and seek for Smart Lock — or, if you happen to’re utilizing a Pixel, open the Security part of your system settings, faucet “Advanced” or “More security settings,” then faucet “Smart Lock.” JRAnd that is it! With these seven sensible changes below your digital arm, your cellphone is formally ready for optimum productiveness. Pretty stable solution to begin a brand new 12 months, would not ya say?Get much more superior efficiency-enhancing data with my free Android Shortcut Supercourse. You’ll be taught tons of time-saving methods on your cellphone!

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