Six Tricks to Make Your Android Cellphone Distinctive to You

“We take into consideration the telephone as your digital lounge,” says Trystan Upstill, vice chairman of engineering at Google’s Android. “You’re assembling the furnishings. You’re placing issues on the partitions.”

Android’s flexibility—and license to run on an unlimited assortment of telephones—has helped it grow to be the most-used cellular software program world-wide. Google tends to launch the newest software program and options on its Pixel telephones, although fashions from

Samsung

and some Chinese language tech giants dominate the market.

Whether or not you bought a brand new Pixel 6 or Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 3 or simply up to date your older telephone’s software program, there are many methods to make your gadget distinctive. You simply must know the place to seek out them. Listed here are some methods to attempt:

Personalize the colours

In case your telephone is working Android 12, you could find Materials You, which adjustments the accent colours of your gadget to match your wallpaper. To entry it, long-press a clean area on your property display screen, faucet “Wallpaper & fashion” and scroll to “Themed icons.” Then, flip it on.

As soon as energetic, you’ll see your keyboard, dwelling display screen icons and different components mechanically change tone to pair along with your background picture.

Tinker with default apps

On an iPhone, SMS textual content messages will solely go to the Messages app, even if you want they might be centralized in your Fb Messenger app, for example. Android customers, in the meantime, have lengthy had the liberty to vary which apps mechanically open for textual content messages, internet shopping and telephone calls and may swap out their default digital assistant, caller ID and residential display screen apps.

You’ll must obtain your most popular new app first. Then, go to your gadget Settings > Apps > Default apps. Faucet the app class you wish to change, after which faucet the app you need as your default. That is helpful if you wish to use

Amazon’s

Alexa as your major voice assistant or customise your name display screen with a calling app like Drupe.

Change your launcher

One of many best methods to customise your Android is to vary your launcher, or dwelling display screen app, which alters how your telephone seems to be and behaves.

There are numerous launcher choices within the Play Retailer, permitting you to set a smartphone dwelling theme to replicate your wants and private fashion.

The Microsoft Launcher app, for instance, rearranges your property display screen to emphasise productiveness by including your Calendar, Sticky Notes and To-Do Lists on one web page. Different launchers, like Nova Launcher, permit for inventive results and animations.

Seek for Launchers within the Play Retailer, obtain choices that appear like they’d match what you’re going for, and set one as your default app.

Change up the lock display screen

Android customers can personalize what they expertise when their gadgets energy on.

The lock display screen, the place you normally enter a PIN or fingerprint to unlock your gadget, could be overhauled completely with widgets, photos and new options.

Downloading the LockScreen Calendar – Schedule app, for example, permits you to handle lists and schedules out of your lock display screen. The DIY Locker allows Android customers so as to add images of buddies or household to their sample code.

When you open the app, it ought to stroll you thru set up it and what permissions are wanted for it to run.

Use one hand

Smartphone screens are getting larger, not smaller, and also you generally want two palms for what looks like a one-handed job. Apple and Samsung have constructed options that allow you to extra simply attain issues throughout the display screen, and now Android 12 offers that capability to extra telephones.

When the mode is enabled, for those who swipe down in an app, the usable display screen space slides down nearer to your thumb. You may swipe again as much as put issues again the place they had been. To allow it, go to Settings > System > and toggle on One-Handed mode.

Add visitor customers

In contrast to on iPhones and iPads, you possibly can even add different customers to your Android gadget, they usually could make their very own customized areas as effectively.

To create new customers, open your gadget settings and seek for “customers.” Search for the A number of Customers possibility, toggle the setting on, then select whether or not to permit your visitor to ship textual content messages or make telephone calls or to limit these actions.

From there, let your visitor arrange a profile utilizing their Google account. Doing so permits the individual to obtain apps and modify settings. You can too select a extra restricted Visitor profile, if somebody doesn’t have a Google account.

And when the individual palms the telephone again to you, you possibly can swap again into your admin account on the lock display screen and enter your password. Consider it like switching profiles on

Netflix.

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Write to Dalvin Brown at dalvin.brown@wsj.com