A quick note before we begin: Android has a wide variety of makes, models, and versions, which makes it more difficult to find features that will be consistent across all devices. We only verified the following tips on stock Android 13—they should also work on related systems, but some of the menus and procedures may vary slightly. There’s also another way to set up mirroring. First, check to make sure you’ve installed the Google Home app for Android—you probably already used this program to set up your Chromecast. Open the app and choose your Chromecast and your device’s display should appear on the big screen. On your phone, tap Media and choose from Music, Video, Podcasts, or Radio and select a service to start streaming. This feature has been around since Android 7.0 Nougat, but it’s one of the few users tend to forget about. This view side-by-side or top-and-bottom app view (depending on the orientation of your screen) comes in handy when you want to display photos, optimize your social networking, or multitask. If you’re struggling to see what’s on the screen—or, alternatively, if you want to cram as much content as possible onto the display and don’t mind doing a bit of squinting along the way—you can zoom in or out on text and objects. Not all apps will respond to these adjustments, but most of them will. You’ll notice a thick black line separating both apps—from the middle drag it up or down to re-distribute your screen. To exit Split Screen mode, just drag the black line all the way up or down. To change size settings, open Settings and go to the Display heading. From there, tap the Display size and text and drag the slider under Font size at the bottom of the screen to make text larger or smaller as needed. Android 13 introduced a new slider on this menu—Display size. You can play around with it to make icons and the Google search bar chunkier. Your device plays several different types of audio—including ringtones, notifications, alarms, phone calls, and media. If you’ve ever gone to the Settings menu and opened Sound & vibration, you’ll have seen that you can use individual sliders to adjust these audio types individually. However, Android gives you a quick-and-easy shortcut. Tap the physical volume buttons on the side of your device to make whatever’s currently playing quieter or louder (if no media is playing, this action will adjust your ringtone volume). When you do, a small box will pop up on the screen, showing which volume setting is changing and how. At the bottom of that box, you should see three dots. Tap them, and the box will expand to show multiple volume sliders at once. This can save you a trip to Settings. App pinning lets you be generous without giving up your privacy and will lock one app to the screen until someone enters the lock screen code or your biometrics again. Essentially, the user won’t be able to access any other parts of your phone without your credentials. Screen pinning is easy to set up. Open Settings, go to the Security & privacy menu, choose More security settings, and App pinning. Once you’ve turned on the feature, launch the app your friend needs to use. Then open the app carrousel by making a short upward swipe from the bottom of the screen. Swipe your way to the app you want to pin and tap on the circular icon at the top of the preview. On the emerging menu, tap Pin. To unpin the app, swipe from the bottom of your screen and hold. This will lock your phone and you’ll have to enter your lock pattern, password PIN, or biometrics to use it. To keep your device safe, you need to set up a PIN code or biometrics scan to unlock your phone. But this makes it more inconvenient to access your apps. Google’s Smart Lock feature lets you remove this obstacle, giving you instant access to your phone—but only when you’re safely at home. From Settings, tap Security & privacy, go to More security settings, and choose Smart Lock. As well as disabling the lock screen when you’re at home (that’s the Trusted Places option), you can also disable the screen when your phone’s Bluetooth is connected to a trusted device, such as your car stereo unit, or when it detects you have it on you. One of the differences between Android and iOS is that Google’s mobile operating system lets you choose different default apps for web browsing, texting, viewing photos, etc. A default app is the one that opens automatically when you try and do something on your phone—so when you click a link, for example, your default web browser app will open it. Take advantage of this flexibility by setting up the defaults as you want them. Head to Settings, go to Apps and choose Default apps. Select any of the categories on screen to see a list of installed apps that can take over default duties. For example, if you’d prefer to chat with friends via Facebook Messenger, rather than your phone’s built-in SMS app, you can make Facebook’s product your default messaging app. This story has been updated. It was first published on June 7, 2017.
