15 Things You Didn’t Know Your Android Phone Could Do

1. Personalize your cellphone with customized colours, themed icons, and even emoji backgrounds. Among the best components about utilizing Android is that you could make your cellphone a real reflection of your character. On Samsung gadgets, faucet and maintain anyplace on the display, after which faucet Wallpaper and Fashion > Colour Palette. On Pixel gadgets, you don’t have to open Colour Palette; the colour teams are under the home-screen preview. The colour choices change the tint of textual content and buttons throughout your gadget. You can even browse an unlimited assortment of paid and free themes, a few of which embrace customized app icons, in Google Play or the Samsung Themes menu; simply remember to defend your privateness by avoiding any which have uncommon permission requests.

Pixel gadgets have a characteristic referred to as the Emoji Workshop, which helps you to customise your cellphone with a colorfully themed emoji background that additionally briefly modifications to lightning bolts if you begin charging your cellphone. You entry the Emoji Workshop by tapping Extra Wallpapers on the backside of the “Wallpaper and Fashion” display.

2. Repair typos with out taking your fingers off the keyboard. You’ll be able to scroll by means of textual content simply along with your spacebar: Simply swipe your thumb left or proper throughout the important thing to maneuver the cursor by means of your textual content and shortly repair any error.

3. Carry again one-handed typing. One extraordinarily legitimate criticism about fashionable telephones is that they’re too extensive and tall to make use of with one hand. One option to facilitate that’s to make use of the one-handed keyboard: a shrunken-down keyboard that you could place in your display to sort extra comfortably. On Pixel gadgets, faucet the four-squares menu within the higher left of your keyboard and choose One-handed. On Samsung telephones, faucet the three dots within the higher proper of your keyboard to activate this characteristic.

4. Use your Samsung cellphone to cost a buddy’s cellphone. Wi-fi charging helps you to simply juice up your cellphone with out having to futz with cords, however it may well additionally switch energy between gadgets. Open Settings after which faucet Wi-fi energy sharing. Put your cellphone face down and place some other cellphone that has wireless-charging capabilities face up on prime of your cellphone. That cellphone ought to begin charging, utilizing your cellphone’s battery. You’ll be able to add a button for this characteristic to your Fast Settings menu.

5. Rapidly entry Settings shortcuts with only one swipe. The Fast Settings menu within the notification shade helps you to change vital settings, resembling toggling your flashlight on and off or muting your cellphone, with only a faucet. Getting there takes two swipes usually, however you could have a greater means: Use two fingers, ideally collectively or aspect by aspect, and swipe down from the highest of your display as an alternative of creating two particular person swipes.

Now that you could get to your Fast Settings quicker, it’s time to make the menu extra practical. On Samsung gadgets, faucet the pencil icon within the higher proper after which faucet the Edit button beneath High or Full. There are dozens of choices, so you could have loads of decisions.

On Pixel gadgets, you’ll discover the pencil icon within the backside proper. Shortcuts for capabilities resembling display casting, QR-code scanning, dwell captioning, or a toggle for utilizing your cellphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot all the time seem within the notification shade. Pixels even have some distinctive instruments, like shortcuts for amplifying sound and recording audio.

6. Simply share Wi-Fi passwords with a QR code. Sick of rigorously spelling out your Wi-Fi password, noting each uppercase and lowercase character? Save time and frustration on Samsung telephones by opening Settings, tapping Connections > Wi-Fi, after which tapping the little QR-code icon within the higher proper. On Pixel gadgets, go to Settings then Community & web > Web, faucet the Wi-Fi community you wish to share, after which faucet the Share button.

Anybody who scans the QR code, even somebody with an iPhone, instantly joins your Wi-Fi community. That’s handy—simply make sure that to indicate it solely to individuals you need in your community.

7. Rapidly activate split-screen mode and take screenshots from the app carousel. On a Samsung gadget, faucet the three-lines button to see a scrollable listing of all of your open apps. Usually you’d use this simply to shortly transfer between apps, however it may well do much more. Faucet the app’s icon on the prime of every preview, and you may open two apps in a split-screen view or see the app in a windowed pop-up view mode.

Pixel gadgets can even enter split-screen view from the app carousel, which you entry by swiping up from the underside of the display. On these gadgets, you too can screenshot or copy textual content from an app immediately from the app carousel.

8. Transfer between your Chrome tabs quicker. Most individuals have means too many tabs open, even on their telephones. To shortly bounce from one in all your tabs to a different, merely swipe left or proper on the tackle bar. Swipe down from the tackle bar in Chrome to see what tabs you could have open; then, you’ll be able to faucet any tab to open it, faucet and maintain to rearrange its spot, or swipe left or proper on any tab to shut it.

9. Lengthy-press an app icon to see helpful shortcuts. Many Android apps provide shortcuts to their core options so that you can bounce proper to what you want. For instance, long-pressing Google Maps pulls up your favourite places, which you’ll instantly begin navigating towards. With Messages, you can begin a brand new dialog or ship a textual content in one in all your most up-to-date chats.

10. Share recordsdata with Android’s model of Apple’s AirDrop. Android’s Fast Share characteristic helps you to share recordsdata between Android gadgets, Chromebooks, and choose Home windows PCs. The characteristic makes use of Bluetooth or device-to-device Wi-Fi to share content material, even for those who’re offline. To set it up, go to Settings, seek for Fast Share, make your gadget seen to close by gadgets, and choose to share along with your contacts or everybody close by (for under 10 minutes).

11. Use Google Lens to determine almost something in your pictures. The Google Lens icon seems on the backside of any image in Google Pictures; faucet it to do a visible search of the topic, and it’ll flip up extra info, together with particulars on merchandise, animals, or vegetation. You can even copy textual content from the picture or translate textual content. Lengthy-press the Dwelling button to entry Google’s Circle to Search characteristic, which does most of the similar issues.

Samsung’s Gallery app has an identical characteristic referred to as Bixby Imaginative and prescient, which you entry by tapping the eyeball within the higher proper of the display.

12. Hand your cellphone over safely by locking it to a single app. The subsequent time you mortgage your cellphone to a buddy “only for a second” or let your child play their favourite recreation, use a characteristic referred to as app pinning to verify they’ll use solely that one app. To set it up, open Settings, go to the Extra Safety and Privateness menu, scroll right down to the underside, and faucet App pinning. A immediate will pop up confirming that the characteristic is on and explaining what it does. On Samsung gadgets, open Safety and privateness in Settings, faucet Extra safety settings, after which toggle on Pin app.

As soon as the characteristic is activated, open the app carousel with a brief swipe up from the underside or faucet the three-lines button on a Samsung cellphone. Choose the app you wish to pin, faucet the icon on prime of the app to open the menu, and faucet Pin. To unpin the app, swipe from the underside of the display and maintain, or, on Samsung telephones, maintain the three-lines and again buttons concurrently; the gesture will immediate your cellphone to lock, and you’ll need to make use of your password, PIN, or biometrics to unlock it.

13. Maintain personal apps hidden away. Personal House helps you to preserve apps hidden in a locked part of the apps tray and requires biometrics or a PIN to entry them. On a Pixel cellphone, go to Settings after which faucet Safety & privateness > Personal house. When you end setup, you’ll discover a new part in your app tray. Apps you put in listed below are absolutely separated from the remainder of your cellphone, so you’ll be able to even have two completely different variations of an app operating directly.

On Samsung telephones, navigate to the Safety and privateness portion of Settings after which go to Extra safety settings > Safe Folder.

14. Snap pictures quicker. Double-tap your cellphone’s energy button to launch the digital camera app, with out even unlocking your cellphone. Urgent the volume-down button snaps an image, which makes capturing horizontally one-handed a lot simpler. You can even press and maintain the volume-down button to begin recording video.

15. Simply report your display. If you could report your display, you don’t need to obtain a separate app to do it. Pull down the notification shade, faucet the pencil, discover Document display, and add it to your notification-shade shortcuts. Whenever you wish to report your display, faucet that button after which specify whether or not to report your entire display or only one app, and if the recording ought to embrace audio.

Did we miss one thing? Share your favourite underappreciated Android characteristic within the feedback.

This text was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Jason Chen.