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10 Useful Hidden Settings in Android You Should Know About

With every newer version of Android Google introduces some new features, some of them add up to your productivity, privacy, while some of them are fun and cool to have. But since not every phone gets the newest and latest version of Android to try out these new features, there are some hidden features already available in previous versions of Android which later makes its official release in newer versions. Here we have complied 10 hidden settings in Android that you should check out.

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10 Useful Hidden Settings on Android

Since most hidden Android settings are located under the Developer Options Menu, you need to enable Developer Options by tapping 7 times on the Build Number of your phone. Once done, the developer options will show up under the system settings.

Note: If you can’t find the build number or developer options, then you can search it in the phone settings.

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Running Services

Even if you remove all apps from the recent menu, some apps still keep running in the background which can drain your battery, increase data consumption, and occupies RAM. You can manually kill those apps from developer options.

  • Open Phone Settings
  • Under System, go to Developer Options
  • Click on Running Services
  • Tap on the app you want to kill
  • Press the stop button

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Disable All Sensors

This trick will enhance your privacy, as with a single click you can disable all sensors of your phone like Mic, Camera, GPS, etc. You do not need to have Android 12 on your phone to use this, you can use this trick on your phone right now. This trick can also be used to prank your friends.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Click on Quick Settings Developer Tiles
  • Enable the toggle for Sensors Off
  • Now disable all the Sensors from Quick Settings toggle with a single click

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Share Fake (Mock) Location

If you want to share a fake location with someone, you can do that as well, there’s a build-in developer option for this as well. In order to do this, you need to have a fake GPS app, which can be easily downloaded from Google Play Store. Once you have downloaded the app, follow these steps.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Select Mock Location App
  • Select the Fake GPS app which you have downloaded
  • Open the app and share the fake location

Show Realtime Refresh Rate

Nowadays, most phones come with high refresh rate displays like90Hz, 120Hz, and even 144Hz. But do you know that they run at the max refresh rate all the time, and even some apps don’t support higher refresh rates? With this trick, you can know the real-time refresh rate of your phone, while using certain apps.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Show Refresh Rate
  • Enable the toggle
  • Now you can see the real-time refresh rate for different apps

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Wifi Coverage Extender

Di you know you can use your phone as a Wifi repeater. This will extend the range of Wifi you are connected to, by boosting the signals with your phone’s hotspot.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Enable WiFi Coverage Extend Feature
  • Connect to a Wifi, click on Edit
  • Check the Extend WiFi Coverage Box, under Advanced Options
  • Turn on your Hotspot to extend the coverage of your main wifi router via this phone to other devices.

Mobile Data Always Active

There are at times that, when you are connected to your WiFi, you need to go out or shift to another place, while you are attending an online meeting, or maybe downloading something, or playing an online game. Now if you move, then obviously you will lose your connectivity, for some time while you switch from WiFi to Mobile Data. With this trick, you can avoid losing your connectivity, and quickly switch to your Cellular Data.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Mobile Data always active
  • This is not turn off your mobile data, for faster and seamless switching

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Speed up your Old Phone

With time your old phone becomes slow and sluggish, like while opening apps, or navigating through the UI. This is due to hardware that is not able to keep up with time, and apps can become heavy, and there are other reasons for it as well. There’s one thing you can do to improve the speed, and that is to reduce or completely turn off animations. Animations can consume good enough time of the CPU, with reduced or no animations, the CPU can launch an App quickly and utilize the saved time for other processing tasks.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down Animations under Drawing Category
  • Reduce or turn off all animations

Simulate Color Space

Nowadays there are some brands that offer a feature to adjust the color tone of the display, while some brands do not offer it. There’s an inbuilt feature to adjust the color tone of your phone’s display, you can choose from a few preset color tones already available.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Simulate Color Space
  • Choose the Color Preset of your choice

WiFi Scan Throttling

If you are someone like me who forgets to turn off WiFi on my phone when there’s no saved network nearby. This will make your phone continuously keep on scanning for WiFi, which will drain your battery life. But with this trick, you can reduce this frequency to 4 times in 2 minutes while using an app, and only 1 time in an hour. This saves some battery of your phone when WiFi is left turned on.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Scroll Down to Wi-Fi Scan Throttling
  • Enable the toggle

Also, Read | 7 Ways to Fix ‘Unfortunately, App Has Stopped’ Error on Android

RTL Layout

This is the last trick and the most exciting one, you can use this trick to have some fun with your friends or even prank on them. This trick will flip the screen horizontally, meaning it will temporarily flip the right side of the screen to the left side, and when your friend picks up this phone, he/she will think their phone has broken down or the software is having some issues, isn’t that fun? Don’t worry it can be fixed by reversing the steps.

  • Go to Developer Options
  • Click on Quick Settings Developer Tiles
  • Enable the toggle for Force RTL layout direction
  • Now you can flip the layout from the Quick Settings toggle with a single click

Also, Read | 3 Ways to Stop Android Phone Screen From Turning Off Automatically

So these are 10 hidden Android settings you can try on your phone, or on your friend’s phone. Do note that some of these settings can quickly drain out the battery, and some might not work on your phone depending on the Android version.

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Gaurav Sharma

As an editor, Gaurav ensures the delivery of quality-rich, detailed, and accurate content tailored to the right audience. His three years of experience as a reviewer allow him to provide comprehensive evaluations of various consumer gadgets. On the video front, Gaurav serves as a video production manager for both long and short formats and anchors short videos at GadgetsToUse.