Android phone slow? I changed 2 developer settings to increase instant speed

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ZDNET Highlights

• Even low-end Android phones can get a performance boost.
• Enable developer options to access hidden settings.
• You will only need to change two settings to get better speeds.

My Pixel 9 Pro runs great, and has done well since I first bought it. However, the many phones I’ve used over the years have had a hard time keeping up with my fingers, eyes, and brain. This can be very frustrating, especially if your phone is your only way to stay online.

When your phone becomes slow, you may be tempted to go to the Google Play Store and install one of the many available “optimizer” apps. I would strongly encourage you not to do that, because those apps rarely do anything good, and the worst case scenario is that the optimizer you just installed is loaded with malware.

So, what do you do?

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Luckily, there are some settings – already available on your phone – that will improve the performance of your device.

These options are built into your Android phone; All you have to do is unlock them.

unlocking features

To unlock and use these features, you need to enable Android Developer Options. Although this may seem a bit daunting, don’t worry, it is not. This way.

Open the Settings app on your phone and go to About Phone. On that page, you will find a list for the build number. Tap that entry 7 times, and build options will now be available (found in Settings > System).

adjust animations

The first setting you’ll want to change is Animations. There are actually three options to change: window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animation duration scale. Here’s what those options do:

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• Window Animation Scale: Controls the speed at which pop-up windows, menus, and dialogs open.
• Transition animation scale: Manages animation speed when switching between screens or apps.
• Animator Duration Sale: Affects the duration of internal UI animations, such as fading, button animations, and loading icons.

These will all be set to 1x by default. Change each of them to 0.5x or off to get some extra speed.

minimize background processes

This feature limits the number of active apps to a specific limit to save battery and boost performance. This feature is best tweaked on devices with low RAM (4GB or less). If this describes your device, you should definitely do so.

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Again, this is found in Developer Options. You’ll find it under Apps, which is at the bottom. Tap the entry labeled “Background process limit”, which will be set to “Standard limit” by default.

From the pop-up, I suggest you select “Maximum 4 processes” to get extra speed without hindering your phone’s performance. You don’t want to limit yourself to only one process at a time, as this means you can’t multitask on your phone.

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And that’s all there is to it. Once you’ve done these two things, you should get better performance from your Android device.