14 Simple Ways to Reduce Data Usage on Android



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  informe_android_sms_0 These days, mobile data is money – and if you do not optimize your phone to handle it intelligently, you throw away money.

After all, you have a plan with a monthly data limit or a configuration in which you are charged for the data you use, it's basically pay for all the virtual information transmitted through your network. provider. In the first case, reducing the use of data could allow you to move to a more economical level of service – while in the latter, every megabyte you save will directly decrease your monthly bill.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to reduce the use of mobile data without seeing a significant impact on their daily experience. Just follow the steps outlined below, get started for a short time and end up with the option of saving Android data at a high level, and see your wallet grow – or the appreciation of your business –

1 Diagnose your data usage
You must understand a problem before you can fix it, so first go to your system setup and look for the line " Use of Data " in section ] Network and Internet . Press, then select " Mobile Data Usage " on the screen that is displayed.
This will give you a detailed description of the applications exactly recorded on your mobile data during the last 30-day cycle. (and if you want an even broader context, you can look in previous cycles by touching the dates at the top of the screen and selecting a previous track). Among the major offenders, there will likely be social networking programs, web browsers and apps that involve the transmission of audio or video. Make a mental note of these elements; Let's go into the details to deal with them in a moment.

If you see something else that is responsible for more than a few megabytes of mobile data, tap them to see them more closely. This will give you a breakdown of the use of the application data in the foreground, in other words, the result of something that you have done actively with your screen; and how much was in the background, or was happening without your active participation

  The Android data usage tool shows you a breakdown of the consumption of each application for a given period.

The Android data usage tool shows you a breakdown of the consumption of each application for a certain period of time.

Keep all this in mind as we go through the following steps.

2. Fighting unnecessary drops in the background
Now that we know what is eating away at your mobile data, it's time to start taking care of it. We will start looking for and limiting specific cases of unnecessary use of data in the background. In this area, social and news apps tend to be among the worst, as they often connect at regular intervals during the day to get new updates. You can choose to disable this behavior – and in most cases, you probably will not even notice the difference.

Open one by one all social or news apps on your phone and look for opportunities to save data in your settings. In the Twitter application for Android, for example, you will find a section called " Using Data ". Touch it, then uncheck " Synchronize Data " to have the application updated only when you are actively watching it. (This will not affect your ability to receive notifications, moreover, are controlled separately in the " Notifications " section of the application settings.)

You find similar options to control the frequency with which you synchronize or update occurs in most social and news applications. And if you have an application that appears as a big consumer of data in the background in our first step, but has no obvious way to control the use of data in your configuration, like Facebook, which is a notorious consumer of data but it does not allow you to completely disable the activity in the background: take control at the system level: go to section Applications of your system configuration and tap the corresponding application line. Touch " Data Usage ", and clear the bar next to " Master Data ". This will prevent the application from using background data unless it is connected to a Wi-Fi network.

(By the way, be sure to do common sense: If you turn off data in the background for something like email application, this app will not be able to receive messages in the background when you are away from home during the day. This is probably not what you want. Think carefully about the implications of disabling the ability of any application to retrieve new information in the background. To do this, and make sure that it does not no compensation possible.)

3. Stop the Madness of Autoplay
Videos are among the most voracious data consumers, and many apps have the bad habit of reading them when & ## They do not even pay attention.

Social network applications, for example, they love to automatically play videos when they pass through a stream or a timeline. But guess what?

In the Android application of Facebook, if you open the main menu and look down to see the line called " Data Backup ", you will find a button that will prevent the media breed themselves. On Twitter, you'll find a similar option in the " Using Data " section of the application settings, and you'll also find data storage options to disable image previews. on your timeline and avoid high quality video every time you are on a mobile network.

Most social apps have similar settings, even if they require some research. Find them all and stop dropping your data allocation.

4. Compress Your Mobile Web Experience
The next step is a simple solution: make sure your browser stops being a data file. The Google Android Chrome browser has an option called Data Saver that directs pages through Google's servers so that they are compressed when they arrive. You can save a large amount of data and speed up your navigation.

To test it, go to Chrome Settings and look for the line labeled " Saving Data ". Touch, and then make sure the switch is on.

If you want even more tools to save data, try Opera Mini. The browser offers its own form of remote page compression and provides a variety of configurations to control the optimization.

  The Chrome data saving feature can greatly reduce mobile data usage, while the Opera Mini equivalent allows you to customize your saving behavior. of data.

The Chrome data saving feature can significantly reduce the use of mobile data, while the Opera Mini equivalent allows you to customize your data saving behavior.

5. Optimize Your Music Apps
Do you have Google Play Music for your morning commute? Go to the application setup and look for the option " Quality in the Mobile Network ". Try setting it to " Under " or " Normal ", and check if the more user-friendly audio quality is sufficient for your ears.

configuration, take a moment to confirm that the option of " Download only Wi-Fi " is enabled, and think carefully about the option of " Store cached music during transmission "This will cause each song to be downloaded by the application, which means that the song will be stored locally and will not require additional data if it is heard again in the future.

If you tend to hear the same songs again and again, it is advisable to enable this option. If you do not listen to the songs too often, it's best to turn them off so you do not need to use the data you need to download (especially if you're using one of the low-quality streaming settings for mobile devices).

Music is not the only audio application with these types of options, of course. Spotify, Pandora and most other music services and podcast have similar controls. Make sure to check the settings of these applications on your phone to make sure that they are configured as efficiently as possible.

6. Put YouTube to Mobile Data Diet
While we're on the subject of streaming, open the YouTube app and look in the section " General " of your settings. There you will find an option for " Limiting the Use of Mobile Data ". Enable it, and the application will use a lower quality transmission and less data when it is on a mobile network

On the same screen, look for the option " Autoplay "and make sure that it is off.

7. Download Media in Advance
The best way to reduce mobile data transmission is to avoid it – and many multimedia applications make it easier. The trick is simply to download the content you want in advance, while being connected to a Wi-Fi network, so that it is stored locally and available whenever it is available. depends on mobile data.

And do not forget, if you subscribe to YouTube Red / Google Play Music, you also have the option to download YouTube videos to watch them anywhere. See the " Background and Downloads " section of the YouTube application settings to get started (assuming you have an active subscription, if you do not have one, the section will not be displayed).

8 Put Your Offline Navigation
Do you know what else can download data in advance and you avoid expensive transmissions? Google maps The next time you'll know you need navigation, open the Maps application in advance, while you're still somewhere with a Wi-Fi network. Find the city you're browsing, then press " More Info " and select " Download " from the menu that appears.

  Search for a city in Maps, then look under "More Information" to find the option to download all your data for future use.

Search a city in Google Maps, then check out "More information" to find the option to download all your data for use in the Future

You can view and manage your downloaded maps in the " Offline Maps " section of the Main Cards Menu

9. Keeping the Play Store On Hold
The application updates are great, but they're great too, and if you're not careful, you can use a lot of mobile data.

Make sure this does not happen by opening the Play Store on your phone. , find Setup and check that option " Automatic Update Applications " is set to " Wi-Fi only ".

10. Try Lightened Versions of Applications and Web Sites
A growing number of services now offer smaller versions of applications, applications explicitly designed to use less data, and offer at the same time time reasonably good experiences. Even if you do not care too much about the use of mobile data, you may find that some of them are preferable to the usual alternatives.

Google has a full set of applications with the mark "Go" for this purpose, although until now, only two are widely available: Google Maps Go and Files Go. (The others – Gmail Go, Google Go Assistant and YouTube Go – are currently only available for Android Go). Facebook, on the other hand, offers lighter versions of its main application and Messenger application, and Skype has an underdeveloped version lite "of its Android client in the game. [19659002] Twitter apparently tries a light version of its Android application in the Philippines – although for the rest of the world, the company suggests that data-conscious users take advantage of its reduced mobile web site . And, last but not least, CNN and NPR offer super light and text-centric versions of their websites that will barely tilt the weight of their data.

  Google Maps Go (left) gives you all basic map concepts in a lighter way, while CNN's unique text web page (right) is designed for minimal data usage.

Google Maps Go (left) gives you all the basics of Maps in a lighter form, while the CNN text-only web page (right) is designed for minimal data use.

11. Disconnect Leaks Without Sense
Now is the time to think about your phone's apps that you no longer use and uninstall them (or disable them, if they're pre-installed). installed and can not be erased) Main Mobile Data Consumers

Keeping these items on your phone, it's like keeping a decoder off of use plugged into a power outlet. Every little factor adds up – so, why allow a meaningless flight of its resources?

12. Perform an account synchronization audit
While you have your work pants, go to the " Users and Accounts " section of your system settings, and then press the line of your Google Account and select " Account Synchronization ".

See what your phone is syncing? Chances are that at least some of this is related to services that you never use. If, for example, you never use Google Drive, Google Play Movies, or Google+, turn off the bar next to the corresponding line. It's one less thing that your phone will record throughout the day. (I hope this is obvious, but it is best that phone-level services such as "Application Data" and "Contacts" remain intact.)

Do you have multiple Google Accounts connected to your phone? Repeat this step for each of them and do the same for the third-party applications that appear on your account list.

13. Attack with all the use of unnecessary data
If you have tried all the above options and you think you can support less data, it is even harder to try, and that Is radical.

7.0 Nougat, Android has a system-level tool called Data Saver that prevents most applications from using mobile data unless they are open on their screen and actively used . This means that applications will not be able to do anything in the background, which includes finding and notifying new messages unless you use Wi-Fi (or manually register them as exceptions). And even applications that you actively use in the foreground will often have to adjust their behavior to use less data.

In fact, it's a harsh measure – but if you're desperate to slow down the use of mobile data, even temporarily, it's worth it to be considered. You can find the function in the Network and Internet section of your system's configuration, in the box named " Using Data ".

14. Let Google help you manage mobile data
Finally, Google recently launched an application called Datally that can handle all the heavy mobile data management tasks for you. The free application gives you a unique place to analyze your data usage – by application, by day and even by hour – and manage the Android data saving feature, with simple switches on / off and important controls to individually restrict the use of data of a particular application. It even gives you a way to view and simultaneously manage the use of an app's data to make adjustments easier.

  Google Datally has all sorts of tools to manage its mobile data usage, both via its own console (left)

Google's Datally has all kinds of tools. tools to manage its use of mobile data, both through its own console (left) and simultaneously with the help of applications (right). [19659009] Datally can also find and suggest high quality Wi-Fi networks in your area – and talk about it, if you have a Pixel or Nexus phone or a Project Fi device, the Google Connectivity Services app, which appears in the Play Store Only if you have a compatible device associated with your Google Account, go one step further: It will be implemented automatically. Connect it to high quality public Wi-Fi networks when they are available, then protect your data with your own integrated VPN.

JR Raphael, Computerworld.com via CIOPeru.pe
Photo credit: JR Raphael / IDG

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