Tip of the Week: Five of Android Pie’s Tastier Features

Despite Android Q being just around the corner, there’s a lot that Android Pie still has to offer. In fact, the average user might not have any idea that these features exist. This week, we’re offering a few tips that you can use to make your phone even more useful to your productivity.

Productivity-Boosting Predictions

One of Android Pie’s abilities is to pay attention, in a manner of speaking, to a user’s typical usage of their device and make predictions of what the user will do next based on their past behaviors. These predictions can be found at the top of the application drawer, and they are pretty specific.

It won’t be that Android suggests that you open your phone application after you’ve interacted with a particular app - Android will recommend that you call a specific contact. If you regularly need to reach out to someone after completing a specific task, this feature can be pretty useful. You can even drag these predictions to your home screen to make access to them even easier.

These Predictions Can Be Turned Off

Naturally, one of the biggest problems with this kind of predictive technology comes about when your device starts to spot patterns that it shouldn’t. This could very quickly become annoying, if you weren’t able to disable these suggestions. When one of these inaccurate suggestions presents itself, press and hold it until you are able to move it around. Don’t show will appear at the top of your screen, and naturally, dragging the suggestion there will prevent that suggestion from showing again.

If you don’t want any suggestions to appear, you can disable them entirely. By pressing on any open area on your home screen, access Home settings and then Suggestions. From there, locate the Apps toggle switch and deactivate it. This will prevent any suggestions from appearing in your App Drawer or the Overview screen.

Using Shortcuts

A prediction isn’t the only thing that can be turned into a shortcut. Many applications come with shortcuts preconfigured, accessible to the user via a long press on the application in question. Long-pressing will pull up a menu of your available shortcuts, allowing you quick access to them, as well as the ability to add a particular shortcut to your main screen.

Screenshot Edits

When using Android Pie, it is remarkably easy to take a screenshot, as well as to edit them after the fact. To take a screenshot, all you have to do is hold down the power button and volume-down button at the same time, or (if using something other than a Samsung device) holding down the power button and using the screenshot selection in the menu that will appear. Once your screenshot is captured, you should receive a notification with the option to edit it, cropping, highlighting, and annotating it as needed. Once finished, you can then share your screenshot with those who need to see it.

Leveraging Adaptive Brightness

How often do you find yourself adjusting your screen’s brightness based on your surroundings? Android Pie can help prevent you from having to do so, by actually “learning” your preferences in different lighting conditions and automatically adjusting the display’s brightness settings. To activate this feature, all you need to do is access the Display section in your phone’s settings and activate Adaptive brightness. Keep in mind, you will need to manually adjust your phone’s brightness for a while to teach it your preferences.

Do you have any favorite Android tricks that we didn’t mention? Share them in the comments!