8 Developer options You Should Use If You Are A True Android Enthusiast

Android as simple an operating system it is for normal users, for people who decide to explore it further, it provides endless capabilities. 

It literally has limitless customization options and with new Android apps pouring in every day almost anything is possible with Android.

Even though apps are good and they provide you with great functionality and awesome new features, nothing is better and comforting than features that come built-in with the phone. 

With theses features, you do not have to download any app nor you have to worry about losing your precious storage space or your limited battery life.

All you have to do is to toggle the developer options hidden in your settings app and then you can access some of the most useful and sophisticated features that come by default with the operating system. 

Though these features are intended for usage by Android app or game developers and Google made it hidden to prevent the normal users from accessing, it is fairly easy to get your hands on these options and why would anyone want to miss on the additional fun when there is little to no risk involved right?

So, dive in to read more about the top 8 awesome things you could do by enabling the developer options and if you are a noobie and never heard of the developer options before, here is how to enable the awesome thing.

Just open your settings app, head over to the about phone option by scrolling till the last and then open it and tap 3-4 times on the build number information at the bottom. Android will now congratulate you as you have become a developer, but we both know that you ain’t one.

Okay, let’s talk features now.

Force Activities to be resizable:

This is one of my favorite features and the most useful among the lot. But keep in mind that this option will only be available in phones with Android Nougat 7.0 and above. So don’t be disappointed if you cannot see it, just wait for your phone’s lazy manufacturer to send it out to your device.

Enabling this feature converts all of the activities of all the apps that are installed on your phone, even in those apps which did not come with a native multi window or resizable support. This means that apps which force closed or did not respond previously when you tried to use them in a multi-window mode will now work flawlessly!

Stop apps with a single click: 

If you are an Android user with a  phone of 1 GB RAM and a dual or a quad core processor, then I am sure that you would be familiar with a situation where your phone does not respond to you as quick as it did when you first bought it. 

Apps open slower, boot time is increased, suddenly some apps force close and many similar things.

You might have tried uninstalling some apps or even made the mistake of downloading some cleaner or booster apps and then believing that they would magically make your phone smoother and faster again. 

But I hate to break that bubble, but my friend it doesn’t work that way. They either make your phone much slower or simply stay there and drain your battery for eternity.

But there is one simple way to solve it and unlike what you might have read on some other websites or blog, it doesn’t require you to open the settings page of individual apps and then clicking on the force close option to stop the app which however will reopen in seconds if any process happens thus draining your battery more in the process.

However, there is one simple solution known as Inactive apps in the developer options which when selected will present you with the list of all apps that you have installed on your phone along with the current status of the app that whether they are in an active or an inactive state. 

So when you just click on the name of an app that is currently in an active state, it instantly goes into an inactive and a hibernated state. This means that the app is completely shut down and until and otherwise, you open the app or the game it will not run again.

You can use this feature to toggle apps or games which you only use once in a blue moon as active, thus saving you the battery life they consume by constantly running in the background and also frees the RAM of your phone and ultimately improving the performance of your Android device!

Limit your background processes: 

Some people may argue against my above-said point that there are no such useful or rarely used apps or games on their phone and they actually use every single app installed on their phone daily or on a regular basis. 

There is an alternate solution for this kind of people which doesn’t require them to toggle any app as inactive. What you need to do is to just limit your background processes to 3 or 4 at the maximum. 

By doing this, whenever you are using an app that needs a lot of memory space in the RAM and there are already several apps that are running in the background and even though you don’t need them and you don’t even remember why you opened them in the first place, Android will help you limit the background processes on a priority basis.

So when you have left 3 apps open in the background and you are now opening a new 4th app then Android will automatically put the last app in the queue, the app you opened a long time before into a hibernation state thus preventing any issues with performance or your battery life.

Don’t keep activities:

If you are the kind of user who opens an app only once everyday like checking your Instagram or answering Questions on Quora and then forget that they even exist for the rest of the day, then this feature is especially for you and it is known as Don’t keep activities as the heading suggests.

What this feature does is that, when enabled it will instantly force close an app as soon as you leave the app screen on press your back button, by this way the app no longer runs in the background hogging your resources or a game you played which had occupied 70% of your RAM will now be released.

This feature is not recommended for those who send and receive a lot of messages or mails since those apps will also be closed once the user exists it, preventing them from sending you any notifications as their background processes are also shut down.

Change your screen width: 

Even though phones running Nougat come with a DPI changer by default, it only allows you to change your width to fixed values like small, medium and Large.

But using this option in the developer options, you can change the value to any number or size according to your liking thus making your display too small or too large based on your sight.

Improve response time by modifying animation scales: 

Currently Android allows you to change three different aspects of your phone’s animation by modifying the window, transition and the duration of the animations. These are all set to 1x by default and if you want to improve the responsiveness of your device, you can lower these values down a notch thus increasing the animation speed and giving a feeling that your device is blazing fast.

Cellular Data active at all times:

This particular feature is very useful for people who travel a lot or simply switch between various WiFi connections. Turning this on will keep your mobile data switched on at all times, so as soon as you leave a WiFi area or when your router is not working, you will be immediately shifted to your mobile data without any further delay thus saving you from missing any messages or notifications.

Stay awake while charging: 

You can turn this feature if you are the person who uses Facebook or Twitter or simply reads on the web a lot. So whenever you connect your phone to the charging cable and start reading or browsing the web, you no longer have to constantly tap your screen every few seconds to prevent it from turning off. Because Android will now do it for you.

Most Useful Android Apps That Google Play Store Doesn’t Have

Google Play Store, the largest app market in the world with millions of app collections and hundreds of apps and games added everyday is one of the best places to find the app you need for your phone. 

Be it any category like a camera app, a compass, a flash light, you can find it here. But the thing with Play store is that, due to its strict privacy policy and content management rules, it doesn’t allow certain apps to be uploaded to its market.

You may ask, but how come it was most recently infected by over 40 apps with the Judy Malware when it’s policies and rules are so strong? Sssshhhhh! 

Anyway, as I am saying even though Google Play store has a ton of useful apps in every possible category imaginable, it doesn’t mean that you should not look beyond that, there are other app markets in the world besides Google like the Amazon app store, Aptoide apps, Mobogenie to name a few.

There is also a whole new world of APKs where you can download an app from a private website where an ambitious developer who loves android and smart phones and in a quest to add more and more abilities to the beloved Android operating system is working hard to upload apps that can do things which cannot be done using the apps available in the Google Play Store.

Since these APKs of several useful apps are out there in the wild among terrabytes of other content in the internet and some of us may not have the patience or the time to go through a massive amount of websites to find that one perfect app to satisfy our needs, I have taken the liberty to bring some of the most useful apps from the lot to the light so that you can also know about them and benefit from them, as I do. 

Hey, infact this website was started for that very own purpose, so be sure to check out some of our other posts to find apps that may seem interesting to you. Okay shameless self promotion aside, let’s dive into the topic and know about the apps I am talking about for the past few hundred words..

Snaptube

I bet you can guess what the app is for from its name. Snaptube is a Youtube downloader app, but unlike other similar apps like Vidmate or Videoder, Snaptube not only downloads videos from Youtube, you can also use it for downloading videos from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, A website you are browsing, Reddit or pretty much anywhere you find a video.

Also, unlike other apps you do not need to copy the link and open the app every time to download a video. Instead, you can either click on the share button and choose snap tube from the option, or if you enable the floating button, snaptube will automatically display a button on the screen when you copy a link, thus enabling you to download a video without leaving the app!

You can also browse inside of the Snaptube app by signing into your Facebook, Youtube or Instagram accounts and then simultaneously download the videos from there, without having to use separate apps for each purpose. 

Of all the best things Snaptube does it is also completely free, you can buy the pro version to remove ads though.

Viper4Android

Technically Viper4Android is not just an app, it comes with a flashable zip file, which you have to flash from your custom recovery to enable the app. 

Viper4Android is an audio enhancement mod which improves your smartphones audio performance and quality by modifying the parameters of your hardware to suit your need.

You can use the app to improve the base of your phone, enable surround and 3D audio while using your headphones and can also add Dolby atmos sound effects to your device speakers. 

It also comes with an auditory protection system which allows you to listen to songs for a longer time without any stress to your ears. Well, obviously the quality of your headphone matters.

Adaway

I think that if there is one thing all the android users would unanimously agree is that we all hate ads and wants to get rid of them. 

While some apps allow the users to remove apps by paying some money or buying a different premium version of the apps, not all apps do that. 

And there are also ads while browsing the web and unlike the web browsers in Computers, the built in chrome browser in android do not come with an ad blocker option unfortunately.

You may argue that we can download other apps with the ad blocking functionality like Opera or UC Browser, but since Chrome comes pre installed on all android device and it is not possible to uninstall it, it would be better if we had the option to block the ads on it. And yes, Adaway does exactly that.

Once you install the app and then download the latest updates and scripts using it, all you have to do is to restart your phone and voilà, all the ads from all the apps installed on your phone are magically gone! 

Though you need not flash any zip files for Adaway to work, it is recommended that you have a rooted android phone for it to work without any issues.

WiFi Kill

We have all been in a situation when some unwanted guests or visitors at your home, starts using your WiFi without your liking and proceeds to drain out your limited bandwidth. Sometimes you just want to turn off your WiFi to prevent them from using it or just to annoy your little brother or sister. But unfortunately you too can’t use the WiFi if you did this.

But what if there is a way to only disconnect their mobile devices from your WiFi without even having to access their phone? Yes it is possible with WiFi kill and all you need is the app and a rooted android phone and you are good to go.

Just download the app from the link and then once you install it scan for the devices that are connected to your WiFi, make sure to identify your device and then the device you want to disconnect from your connection. 

Now just click on it and then proceed to select the kill option. That’s it, now you can use your internet in peace, all alone.

Feel free to comment below if you have any doubts regarding how to use these apps or the steps involved and also if you know any other app that is not available in the Google Play Store, don’t hesitate to comment! 

Share this with your friends, especially those with iOs devices to let them know that what android users can do and what iPhone users cannot!

How to minimize time spent on your smart phone by knowing your usage pattern

The typical day of a smart phone user would be to, wake up, start using  the phone, sleep. Smartphones have invaded our everyday life so much that we spend more time with them than we do with our friends and family.

Though sometime it is necessary and done for productive purposes, most of the time spent using smartphones or to either use popular social messaging apps like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp or to play addictive games like clash of clans according to recent statistics by Flurry which say that an average user spends almost 5 hours everyday with his smartphone.

So, how to cut down your smartphone usage and to actually spend your time productively rather than killing it by killing the clans or the like buttons. One way is to travel to the Himalayas and then throw your phone from there and come back home. 

But since it is a lot of time and money consuming process and also you may need your phone for making calls or doing some other productive tasks like checking your mail or the time, I am going to suggest you a simple alternative which is neither time consuming nor requires you to book a flight ticket.

Ironically, to stop using apps for a long time, you need the help of an app. Time used, an android app developed by Time factory helps you to cut down your daily time spent with your smartphone and helps you to increase your productivity.

What it does is that, once you install and give the usage access to the app, it starts detecting and analysing your usage pattern and then shows you the time you spent using every single app on your phone. 

For example, If you use Facebook for 23 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the evening and then played a game for 1 hour it will record all the data and then show you the usage pattern in the form of a chart or a graph.

You may not worry about the app consuming your battery or occupying your RAM as it is running in the background all day. This is because the app is very light in size and since it also comes with no ads it is highly unlikely that it will affect your device performance or your battery life.

You can also go a step further in productivity and then use the Time Lock, another app from time factory which locks your phone for the specific time interval set by you so that you cannot use any of your apps or games during this time period. However you can place and receive calls based on your preference.

Be sure to check these apps and comment below your suggestions. Share this post with your friends or family whom you think should stop using their phone and start living their life!

How To Get Notification Bubbles For All Your Notifications Like Facebook Messenger

Remember the app by Facebook that allows you to send messages to your friends and post stories? No, not Instagram. No, not Whatsapp. It is the Messenger app that Facebook forces on you to download a separate app that consumes hundreds of megabytes just like the Facebook app, yes the Facebook Messenger. 

Though it occupies a lot of your storage and RAM it has one really good thing and surprisingly it was not copied from Snapchat. It is the notification bubbles for your messages also known as chat heads.

These bubbles appear on the left or right corner of your phone and allows you to read and reply to your messages from any app, without having to actually open and enter the messenger app. So it kind of took multitasking to the next level. 

But unlike Facebook Messenger no other android third party app or system app have added this bubble notification feature. 

So as it always happens an enthusiastic android user have developed an app called Bubblefication which apparently, as the name suggests, bubblefies notifications sent by each and every app installed on your phone.

So whenever you get a new notification, Bubblefication will display a notification bubble at the corner of your phone, in the colour and size you like. You can even select which notifications you want to display and which you don’t. 

The app also allows you to view long messages which is normally not visible in the notification panel and you can even reply to and view messages in fullscreen activites like when you are playing a game or watching a movie. And the best part about this app is that it is completely free and has no ads!

Bubblefication also shows the history of your notifications so that you can views those old messages or alerts you dismissed. 

How to setup the app

Step 1:

Install the app from this playstore link.

Step 2:

Open the app and then enable the notification access permission to allow the app to detect and read your notification.

Step 3:

Now select and deselect which apps you want or don’t want to show the notifications.

Step 4:

Finally you can now customise the features of the app according to your preference like the colour, size and position of the bubble. 

You can also choose what action to perform when the bubble is clicked and whether or not to display the bubbles in the lockscreen.

Be Sure to check out the app to improve the multitasking abilities of your phone and comment your suggestions!

How To Use Android Instant Apps Without Installing Them In Your Phone

Google announced a few months back that they are bringing instant apps to their Android operating system. Instant apps are a nifty little feature where you click on a shared or a posted link online, and then a small snippet of code that is required for the functioning of the app gets downloaded allowing you to use the significant part of the app without even installing it on your phone.

As we already said in our previous post, Instant apps have a lot of benefits like saving your precious storage, using apps with large sizes without even downloading them, especially useful in situations where you need to use an app quickly, but you don’t have sufficient data or speed to do that. You can read more about the advantages and working of Instant apps here.

However, as remarkable as the instant apps may sound, Google seems to take its own time in rolling them out to the extensive public user base. So, as it always happens an impatient and an enthusiastic developer, this time from India has taken the liberty to bring the instant apps version of popular favorite Android apps to his fellow Android enthusiasts. 

A recent startup which goes by the name AppBrowzer have released and Android app of the same name which allows the users to use popular Android apps as instant apps, without having to install or download them to your phone.

Unlike Google, which is planning on developing instant apps only for big developers who are enrolling in the program, AppBrowzer has developed instant apps for widely popular Android apps in every category. 

Some of them include Uber, Amazon, IMDB, Quora, Paytm, CNN and many more apps out there, All you have to do is to install a single app, AppBrowzer on your phone and then voila, you can now use multiple resource-hungry and storage consuming apps without having to spend a byte of your storage.

All you have to do is to choose your  favorite app or an app you want to use only for a single time, like booking an Uber or using Amazon to enjoy the app only offers but you are too reluctant to download those apps just for a single time usage.

AppBrowzer then loads the app you have selected and sure enough it provides the same experience you get when you actually download and install the app from the Google Play store, except for this time it is much quicker and less space consuming, not to mention saving hundreds of megabytes of your precious limited data.

Feel free to comment on your experience with AppBrowzer and post suggestions or requests below if any! You can also visit the website of the developer for more information!

Google Maps Introduces Pacman And You Can Play It Anywhere In The World!

Google always tries to do some great pranks on every 1st of April, the April fools day. 

I mean no one can forget the time when Google announced the development of a project called Google Nose and made millions to actually believe that it can actually detect the smell of the object you place on your screen. Also with this year’s Google Gnome, a Google home for your yard, Google succeeded yet another time in pranking its users.

But this year Google actually tried something new which is for legit and is not a joke. Wait for it. Yes, Google has introduced the all time classic game, Pacman to one of its apps which has been downloaded over a billion times, that comes pre-installed on every Android phone, Google maps.

You read that right, you can now literally play the popular Pacman game, the tiny little blob chasing its enemies on your streets or wherever you choose to play. You can play Pac-Man on the streets of New York, over the Eiffel tower, on the walls of China or even near the white house.

Sounds cool right? Here’s what you have to do to play the iconic Pacman game on your streets, or anywhere in the world you wish. Just open the Google Maps app on your phone and then click on the Pacman icon towards the right. That’s it, start having fun with the Pacman!

Comment below if you are not getting the game or don’t know what to do and share this with your friends and let them join in this awesomeness!

Make Your Home Button Long Press Action To Do Anything But Launch Google Assistant

If you own an Android phone and are in social media, then you probably have known by this time that Google is rolling out its Google assistant which was designed to run exclusively on their pixel phones to all of the Android smartphones running the Android versions of marshmallow and nougat.

This means that your classic long press action on your phone’s home button will cease to launch the now on tap function from Google. Instead, it will initiate the voice-based personal assistant from Google to which you can communicate only via your voice. 

As impressive and nifty the Google assistant may sound it is sometimes annoying and also what’s the point in wasting your home button for launching an app when you can already start it with your voice by saying “Ok Google.”

So what if you don’t want to launch the Google assistant on long pressing your home button? What if you want to assign some other more useful action to it like launching an app you frequently use or visiting your daily website or switch on your flashlight or even call one of your contacts?

You may ask, “yes it sounds kind of cool but how am I supposed to alter something just android assigned to by default?”. Dude, we are talking about Android here, and in Android, almost anything is possible just like replacing the long press action of your home button to anything you want once you follow the below steps.

Step 1:

Install the Home bot app from the Google Play store.

Step 2:

Open the app and then click on the Enable option from the top. Nothing to worry, it is just the core functionality of the app which replaces your favorite option instead of Google assistant from launching when you long press the home button.

Step 3:

Once you click on, enable you will be taken to the assist and voice input settings page where you will find the assist app option at the top. Click on the gear icon next to it.

Step 4:

Now a screen will pop up with the list of apps with the assisting functionality on your phone. Just select the home bot app from that list. And then click on the agree option from the confirmation dialog that appears next.

Step 5:

You can now go back to the home bot app where you could select one option from the list.

You can choose to launch any app, a shortcut, open a website or even toggle your flashlight or the brightness of your phone.

I have currently set it to launch my favorite music playlist upon long pressing the home button.

Let me know in the comments what have you set it up for and also don’t forget to share this with your friends!

How To Instantly Know When A Paid App Goes On Free Sale On Playstore

Google had recently announced that it will allow the app developers who have placed their paid apps for sale on the Google Play store to host a free sale on their app as a part of a promotional activity for a limited period of time. 

This means that you could actually get the app you have got your eyes on for some time for free, no strings attached.

As awesome as this offer sounds, unfortunately, an app could go on a free sale only for a limited period of time, and it is next to impossible to exactly find and download such apps among the myriad of apps available in the Google Play store.

To make things easier and to quickly download the free apps within the limited time, a developer has come forward and put together a nifty app which lets you know through notifications instantly whenever a paid app goes on a sale on the play store. 

This means that you will never miss a chance to grab your download of that app which you thought was awesome but didn’t have the money to purchase it.

This app notifies you about all kinds of apps in the play store whether they are from a large developer of from a newbie and it also includes games. All you have to do to get your hands on is to follow the below steps.

Step 1:

Download the Free App Notify app from the Google Play store.

Step 2:

Open the app, and that’s it you can now find the list of all apps in the play store that went on a free sale recently.

You can also search to see whether your favorite paid app is on sale yet.

Step 3:

You just have to wait now till the app notifies you about the next app or game that goes on a free sale.

Enjoy!

How To Add A Floating Widget In Any App

Ever been in a scenario while you are enthusiastically playing a game or watching a video online and you feel the constant urge to check out your time or your remaining battery level? 

That disturbing thing you have to do in full-screen apps to pull down your notification bar to view details which may sometimes disrupt or freeze the navigation bar and put an end to your fun.

Sometimes you are reading an ebook online or in an e-book reader, or you just browse the web or read your emails and find valuable information. What do you want to do when you note that down? 

You either copy it there and then go to your home screen or the list of your apps and then open your note taking app to paste that information and then return to your previous app. Sounds tedious, isn’t it?

Well, that’s why I am here with a simple solution, an app, which lets you add floating onscreen widgets from the apps installed on your phone, making it easier to access common and useful tasks without having to leave your current app.

Wth this app, you can add the clock or a battery indicator widget to your fullscreen apps towards a corner without having to exit the app or even insert a notes widget while you browse or traffic indicator widget up and run while you are commuting and playing games on your phone.

You can also add a widget indicating the amount of RAM used, percentage of your processor involved and the GPU level while you are playing a resource hungry game.

This is how you are going to do it:

Step 1:

Install the floating widget app from play store and open it.

Step 2:

Now you will be presented with a screen where there are 5 sections namely for adding up to 5 widgets, and you will be on the 1st widget section now.

Step 3:

Click on the select widget button on your screen.

Step 4:

Now you will see a Choose widget menu with the list of all widgets installed on your phone. Select the widget which you want to use.

Step 5:

After selecting the widget, you will be returned to the previous screen. Click on the set position & size button in this screen which will take you to a demo screen with an example of how your floating widget will look.

Step 6:

You can now touch and drag it to place it wherever you want on your screen and then resize it to the preferred size.

You can repeat the similar steps to add up to 5  floating widgets on various apps you like. 

I have added the Google news widget here for example which allows me to have a glance at the news at all times.

Feel free to play with the app and make it useful. Be quick enough to download the app from the play store because it is on a limited free sale for 2 days!

How Much Popular Youtubers Earn Everyday Will Shock You

Youtube is a popular video sharing and uploading platform we all know about it, and it growing humongous with thousands of videos being watched and uploaded every minute or even seconds. Some of them even spend an average amount of time on the internet watching videos on Youtube.

It has been a long time since Youtube has become a content marketing platform and many individuals who call them Youtubers have become successful by creating Youtube videos on various famous and unique niches. 

Thanks to the simple and easy to setup ad monetization program on Youtube, if you have enough subscribers and generate enough views on your videos, you could generate a significant amount of money, and many famous Youtubers with millions of subscribers even make their living out of the ad revenue generated from Youtube.

Here is an easy way how you can find how much these Youtube celebrities make every day, month and year and I promise you that you would be shocked after you know the answer.

First Install this app from Play store and then open it.

Now the app is for yours to play, you can search for any popular Youtuber, and the app will return the big figure they are making by estimating it based on their subscribers and the ratio of the comments and the views their videos get.

Here are some examples of most popular Youtubers like Pewdiepie, iisuperwomanii and MKBHD in the meantime to keep you shell shocked.

While us, the viewers are innocently watching videos on Youtube, there are people out there making money literally while we spend our time.