How to Make Your Android Phone Less Annoying

It’s hard to unplug these days. PCs, tablets, smartphones—even a large selection of home appliances—can wirelessly connect to the internet at the push of a button. Devices buzz with emails, notifications, and status updates at all hours of the day, making it hard to concentrate. Your Android phone is no exception—but there are ways to make it less annoying.

- JASON COHEN

DISABLE BLOATWARE APPS

Whether your phone was made by Samsung, OnePlus, or another manufacturer, it comes pre-installed with a number of apps you probably don’t want. This bloatware can come courtesy of your phone’s manufacturer, carrier, Google, or unrelated licensing deals. You might never use these apps, but they take up space and resources on your phone.

While bloatware is not unique to mobile devices, it’s most insidious on phones because of their limited computational resources. A Samsung device may come with multiple apps pre-installed from Amazon, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft, before even counting the company’s own collection of programs.

A brand-new phone may perform fine with this extra baggage, but after a few years, space will be sparse. Delete unwanted apps to free up your phone’s background resources by long-pressing on the app icon to prompt the disable option. Or access individual app options under Apps in the settings menu.

TURN OFF AUTO BRIGHTNESS

Have you ever noticed your screen suddenly dimming or brightening all by itself? That’s auto-brightness, also called adaptive brightness on some devices. While it’s useful in theory, it can overcompensate or change too suddenly for some. If you find it too jarring, turn it off under your phone’s display settings or the phone’s pulldown shade. Then manually move the slider to your desired brightness. The blue-light filter, meanwhile, can also help you snooze better.