Category Archives: Android Tips and Tricks

So you just got your brand new Google Pixel 10. Congratulations! It’s an incredible piece of hardware, and you’re probably itching to download your favorite apps, sign into your accounts, and start snapping photos.

Before you dive in, though, a handful of settings can drastically improve your day-to-day experience. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, Google leaves them turned off by default. Changing these settings can do everything from improving your battery’s long-term health, saving you storage space, organizing your home screen, and making sure you never miss an important notification again.

Whether you’re a long-time Pixel fan, a seasoned Android user coming from another brand, or switching from iPhone to Android, this guide will walk you through the essential first tweaks. I’ve been using Pixel phones for years, and I have a list of settings I change every single time I unbox a new one. I’ve updated my personal checklist for the exclusive features on the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro, and now I’m sharing it with you.

Some of these are fundamental Android settings that I think everyone should use, some are clever features exclusive to the Pixel ecosystem, and a couple are powerful new tools available only on the Pixel 10 Pro models. So let’s dive in and get your new phone tuned to perfection.

Android’s notification system is, without a doubt, one of the best things about the entire operating system. It’s powerful, customizable, and miles ahead of the often-chaotic system you’ll find on iOS. However, it’s not perfect. We’ve all been there: a flood of notifications comes in, and in a rush to clear them, you accidentally swipe away something important. Maybe it was a message from a friend, a shipping update for a package, or a security alert from your bank. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. What do you do?

This is precisely why one of the very first settings I enable on any Android phone is Notification History. It’s a simple but incredibly powerful feature that acts as a log for every single alert your phone receives. Turning it on is a lifesaver.

To activate it, follow these simple steps:

1. Open the main Settings app.
2. Tap on Notifications.
3. Tap on Notification History.
4. Toggle the Use notification history switch to the On position.

That’s it. From now on, a complete record of all your notifications will be kept right here. If you ever accidentally dismiss something, you can just come back to this screen and see exactly what it was.

There’s also a nifty bonus to this feature. The history log doesn’t just show the notifications that appeared in your drop-down shade; it shows all of them, including the silent ones that apps often use to run processes in the background. This makes it a fantastic diagnostic tool. If you ever notice your battery draining faster than usual, you can check your Notification History to see if a specific app is constantly pinging your phone with silent alerts. It’s a great way to identify and rein in misbehaving apps that might be draining your battery without you even realizing it.

With the Pixel 10 series, Google has fully embraced its latest design language, Material 3 Expressive. One of the most noticeable changes this introduces is an updated status bar. While it looks clean and modern (and a bit like iOS), the default battery icon at the top of the screen isn’t as helpful as it could be. It gives you a vague visual idea of how much charge you have left, but it’s hard to tell if you’re at 40% or 25% with just a quick glance. For those of us who like to know the precise number, there’s an easy fix.

You can add a percentage display right inside the battery icon, giving you an exact reading without taking up any extra space in your status bar. Here’s how:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap on Battery.
3. Find the toggle for Battery percentage and turn it On.

Instantly, you’ll see the number appear inside the icon, giving you a much clearer picture of your remaining battery life.

Bonus Tip: Limit charging to 80% for better battery longevity

While you’re on the Battery settings page, there’s another crucial tweak you should make to dramatically extend the lifespan of your phone’s battery. Tap on Battery Health and then Charging Optimization. This feature will be on by default and set to “Adaptive charging,” which intelligently learns your daily routine. It charges your phone at a slow pace to hit 100% just before you typically unplug it. This is good, as it helps keep your battery healthy, but we can do better.

For maximum battery health, enable the Limit to 80% option. This forces your Pixel to stop charging once it reaches 80%. While it might seem counterintuitive to give up 20% of your daily battery capacity, the long-term benefits are enormous. Lithium-ion batteries degrade fastest when they are held at very high or very low states of charge. By keeping your battery between 20% and 80% as much as possible, you can significantly reduce wear and tear, potentially adding years to the usable life of your phone. Unless you’re a very heavy user who consistently needs every last drop of power, this is a trade-off worth making.

Now Playing is one of the coolest and most-loved exclusive features on Pixel phones. When you first set up your device, Google asks if you want to turn it on, and you absolutely should. The feature uses on-device machine learning to constantly listen for music playing around you. When it identifies a song, it discreetly displays the title and artist on your lock screen. It’s been an incredible tool for me over the years, helping me discover new music at coffee shops, stores, or in a friend’s car without ever having to pull out my phone and frantically open Shazam.

Recently, Google supercharged this feature by integrating the power of Google Search. Previously, all song analysis happened completely offline on your device, which is great for privacy but could occasionally fail to identify more obscure tracks. With the new enhanced mode, your phone can leverage Google’s massive online database for better recognition. As a bonus, it will also display album art in the Now Playing history, which is a really nice touch.

To make sure this more powerful version is active, do the following:

1. Head to Settings.
2. Tap on Display & touch, then Lock screen.
3. Tap on Now Playing.
4. First, make sure Identify songs playing nearby is toggled on.
5. Then, make sure the Enhance Now Playing feature is also toggled on.

With this enabled, you’ll get more accurate results and a richer visual experience, making one of the Pixel’s best features even better.

The idea of a seamless ecosystem where all your devices work together in harmony has long been the holy grail of consumer tech. With cross-device services, Google took a significant step toward making that a reality for Android users. If you own multiple Android devices, like a phone and a tablet, this feature is a must-have. It enables cool new ways for your gadgets to interact. For example, you can be on a Google Meet call on your tablet and, with a single tap, seamlessly transfer it to your phone if you need to leave the house.

Here’s how to get it set up:

1. Open Settings and tap on Connected Devices.
2. Tap on Connection preferences, and then Cross-device services.
3. Follow the setup prompts. Once you’re done, you’ll see a list of all the devices attached to your Google account that are compatible. You can leave them all checked.

The whole concept of cross-device services is relatively new. As such, Google might bring more features to this later on, so it’s a good idea to have this enabled even if you don’t plan on using it for now!

Building on the theme of a multi-device ecosystem, here’s a tip specifically for those who own more than one Pixel product. One of the most frustrating small annoyances of having a Pixel phone and a Pixel Tablet is dealing with the same notification on every single screen. You get a Gmail alert on your phone and swipe it away, only to see the same alert sitting on your tablet, waiting to be dismissed again. It’s redundant and, frankly, a waste of time.

Thankfully, Google has a solution. You can sync notification dismissals across your Pixel devices, so when you clear an alert on one, it automatically disappears from the others. It’s a simple change that makes managing your digital life feel much more streamlined.

To turn it on, follow these steps on each of your Pixel devices:

1. Go to Settings, then tap Notifications.
2. Scroll down and tap Dismiss notifications across Pixel devices.
3. Turn on the single toggle you find on this screen.

Now, when you swipe away that email on your phone, it will vanish from your tablet a moment later. It’s awesome.

Bonus Tip: Stop the notification barrage with Notification Cooldown

Here’s a bonus tip for everyone, whether you have one Pixel or five. We all have that one friend or family member who sends texts like this:

• Hey
• What’s up?
• You there?
• Just wanted to ask a question

Each message triggers a separate notification, causing your phone to buzz and beep incessantly. To combat this, you should enable Notification Cooldown. This clever feature detects when you’re getting a bunch of notifications from the same app in quick succession. Instead of alerting you at full volume every single time, it will gradually lower the volume/vibration of the notification sounds, making the experience much less disruptive.

To activate it:

1. Go to Settings > Notifications.
2. Scroll down and tap on Notification Cooldown.
3. Make sure the toggle at the top is turned On.

Your sanity will thank you (but also, please tell your friends to just send one text).

If you’ve ever used an iPhone, you’ll know that it doesn’t have an app drawer. Every app you install gets dumped directly onto your home screen, creating page after page of icons. For many of us who prefer Android, this feels like pure chaos. The app drawer is a core part of the Android experience, providing a clean, organized space where all your apps live, leaving your home screen free for only the most important shortcuts and widgets.

Unfortunately, Android still mimics iOS in one frustrating way by default: as you download new apps from the Play Store, their icons are automatically added to your home screen. This quickly leads to clutter. Thankfully, unlike on iOS, you can easily turn this behavior off.

Here’s how to make your apps go straight to the app drawer, where they belong:

1. Long-press on any empty space on your home screen.
2. In the menu that pops up, tap Home settings.
3. Turn off the toggle next to Add app icons to home screen.

With that simple change, your home screen will remain the pristine, curated space you designed it to be.

Bonus Tip: Fit more on your screen with a smaller app grid

While you’re customizing your home screen, here’s another tweak you might enjoy. By default, the app grid is set to a size that might feel a bit too spacious for some. If you want to fit more app icons or widgets on a single page, you can easily change the grid layout.

1. Long-press on an empty space on your home screen again.
2. This time, tap Wallpapers & style.
3. Scroll down to the bottom where it says Layout and tap it.
4. Switch to the Small layout option.

This will increase the grid density, allowing you to fit more shortcuts onto each page of your home screen, making it even more efficient.

Back in the day, Google’s beloved camera app featured persistent on-screen controls for fundamental photography settings like brightness, shadows, and white balance. They were always there, giving photographers quick and easy access to manual adjustments. Then, for reasons only Google understands, the company removed them, burying these options in menus.

Google did eventually bring them back…sort of. The controls are available again, but they’re hidden by default. When enabled, you can access them by simply tapping anywhere on the viewfinder inside the camera app. It’s not quite as immediate as having them always on screen, but it’s a huge improvement over digging through menus.

To get these controls back, you need to turn them on first:

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Tap the small gear icon to open the settings panel.
3. Tap the three dots at the top of this panel to go to More settings.
4. Scroll down to the Fast Access section and make sure the Quick access controls toggle is active.

Now, whenever you’re lining up a shot, just tap on the viewfinder to bring up those classic sliders and fine-tune your photo to perfection.

This next tip is a bit more technical, but it’s an absolute game-changer, especially if you shoot a lot of video or opted for a Pixel 10 with 128GB of storage. The Pixel 10 series introduces the ability to record video using three different codecs (a codec is simply the technology used to compress and decompress digital files). The new third option is called AV1, and you should definitely turn it on.

In essence, AV1 is a newer, more efficient way of compressing the video footage you shoot. It allows you to maintain the same high video quality while creating significantly smaller file sizes. To give you a concrete example, a one-minute video shot in 4K at 60fps using the older AVC codec will be about 550MB. That same video shot with AV1 will be just 440MB. That’s a 20% reduction in file size, which can add up to gigabytes of saved space over time.

So, why isn’t this on by default? The only catch is compatibility. Because AV1 is a newer standard, some older devices, video players, or video editing software might not support it. However, if you’re like most people and primarily watch your videos on your phone or upload them to modern platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, you’ll have no issues at all.

Here’s how to enable it:

1. Open the Camera app and tap the gear icon at the lower left.
2. Tap the three dots to open More settings.
3. Scroll down and tap on Video Format.
4. Select the AV1 option.

Unless you have a specific professional workflow that requires an older codec, this is a change you should make immediately.

If you splurged on a Pixel 10 Pro or Pixel 10 Pro XL, you have the most advanced camera system ever put into a Pixel phone. As such, you get access to some special features the standard model doesn’t, including the ability to shoot portrait mode photos at a full 50MP resolution.

On other Pixel models (and by default on the Pro), portrait mode shots are binned down to 12MP. This process combines data from multiple pixels on the sensor into one, which is often great for low-light performance but sacrifices some fine detail. While the results are good, other flagship phones have offered higher-resolution portrait modes for a while, providing more detail and often better edge detection (the software’s ability to separate the subject from the background blur).

With the Pixel 10 Pro, you can finally capture those incredibly detailed, high-resolution portrait shots. The only minor downside is that the image files will be larger, but for important photos of people or pets, the jump in quality is absolutely worth it.

To activate this mode:

1. Open the Camera app and swipe over to Portrait mode.
2. Tap the gear icon at the lower left.
3. Tap the Pro tab.
4. Switch from the 12MP option to the 50MP option.

You should immediately see a noticeable improvement in the clarity and detail of your portrait photos.

My final tip is another one exclusive to the Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL, and it’s all about making your phone feel more personal. On all previous Pixel phones, the always-on display (AOD) has been a stark, utilitarian affair: a black screen with white text for the time, date, and notification icons. It’s functional, but not exactly exciting.

With the Pixel 10 Pro/XL, you can now set your lock screen wallpaper to appear on the AOD. It’s a dimmed, power-efficient version of your wallpaper, but it adds a wonderful splash of personality to a screen that was once just black and white. If your wallpaper is a photo of a loved one, a pet, or a favorite landscape, it makes your phone feel much more uniquely yours, even when it’s idle.

Here’s how to enable it:

1. Go to Settings, then scroll down to Display & touch.
2. First, make sure the toggle next to Always-on display is active.
3. Then, tap on the text itself (not the toggle) to open its options.
4. Inside, make sure the toggle for Show lock screen wallpaper is turned on.

Now, when you lock your phone, your wallpaper will gently fade into view on the always-on display. Keep in mind that this will use slightly more battery than the traditional black-and-white display. In my testing, the difference was negligible and well worth the aesthetic improvement. However, if you’re someone who needs to squeeze every possible minute out of a charge, you might prefer to leave this off. For most people who charge their phone nightly, you’ll be totally fine.

And there you have it — the first ten things I immediately change on a new Pixel 10 to get the absolute most out of it. Hopefully, you found a few new tricks in here to try on your own device.

Before you go, I have one last bonus tip: explore the My Pixel app. This app comes pre-installed on your phone (it used to be called Pixel Tips) and it’s an incredible resource. It’s filled with tutorials and information on all the cool things your phone can do, including new features that arrive in Google’s quarterly Pixel Drops. I highly recommend opening it up every few months to see what’s new. You’d be surprised how many powerful features go unnoticed by the average user.

Now, I want to hear from you. What are the first settings you change when you get a new phone? Do you have any essential tips or tricks that I missed? Let me know in the comments below. I’m always excited to see if our readers have any clever suggestions I can add to my own routine!