5 Android features that can have an unexpected effect on your daily routine

Your phone is one of the most essential aspects of your daily routine. From taking notes to sending important messages to setting alarms to wake up on time, a simple handset offers many things that make your daily life easier. No matter what brand of smartphone you own, each company does its best to offer its users more features than anyone else, primarily targeting everyday convenience and the ability to make simple things much simpler.

You can always get a magnetic accessory that you’ll use every day to make your phone more useful, but there are many features already built into your phone that you probably won’t use to their full extent. Some of these features are enabled by default, but you’re never told you can use them, like the ability to quickly switch between apps or edit text by holding down the spacebar. Others need to be enabled manually, but offer even more ways to further improve your Android experience, like storing copied data and automating tasks you do every day.

The ability to copy and paste text strings is something we don’t think about often, but it’s one of the most used features by many. Whether it’s a website link, an excerpt from an article, or a complex password, manually entering certain information just isn’t feasible for most people. This works well enough if you’re copying a single piece of data, but if you’re filling out multiple fields, you’ll have to constantly switch between apps to copy and then paste each individual item. On a computer, you can easily switch between tabs or even use your second monitor as a clipboard, but the limited screen space on a phone makes things more difficult.

Fortunately, most Android keyboards come with a built-in clipboard history feature that allows you to store multiple items. You can copy them all at once, move them where you need them, without having to switch from one application to another. The option is usually found as a clipboard icon above your keyboard. If you don’t see it, there’s probably a button that shows more options, like three dots or a set of squares. You need to enable this feature in Gboard, while it is enabled by default on Samsung keyboard.

Items you copy here are automatically deleted after a few hours, but you can also pin important items like certain emails or phone numbers you use often to keep them indefinitely. What’s more, this storage space isn’t just for text: recently taken screenshots can even appear here, and you can pin them the same way as any text you’ve copied.

Being able to take your phone with you anywhere means you’re always connected to others, usually via text. You send emails, talk on messaging apps, and interact with other people on social media platforms, and all of this requires actively typing on your phone. A situation you will often encounter is that you realize you made a mistake and need to go back and correct it. This is simple enough on a computer where you can hover your cursor over the error or use your arrow keys to navigate the cursor marker, but your Android keyboard doesn’t allow this.

Instead of blindly typing and hoping you land in the exact place you want to insert a word — or worse yet, erasing a good portion of your paragraph just to correct a typo — most Android keyboards allow you to hold down the spacebar to switch to cursor mode. When you move your thumb while holding it on the screen, you can freely navigate between the letters and symbols in your text and place your cursor exactly where you want it.

This feature is enabled by default on most Android keyboards, but sometimes you may not have access to it. This is mainly the case if you have multiple languages ​​set up on your keyboard, as the spacebar is then used as a quick way to switch between languages. You can change this quite easily by opening the keyboard app from your app drawer or going to Settings > System > Keyboard > Keyboard appsthen selecting the keyboard from the list to access its settings.

Switching between apps is something most of us do without thinking. The process is relatively simple and extremely quick, regardless of which mode you use. If you’re using the three-button navigation, you can either press the Home button and open an app from your Home screen, or press the Recents button and scroll to another app. For those using gestures, you can swipe up and briefly pause to achieve the same effect.

However, it can be much faster and more convenient. For those who use gesture navigation, swiping down on your screen lets you switch between apps without opening the Recents view. Swiping right lets you move to the previous app or back in the queue, while swiping left does the opposite. If you have three-button navigation enabled instead, you can double-tap the Recents button to immediately jump to your most recent app, the same way you can use Alt+Tab in Windows.

For those with Pixel phones, you can go even further by enabling Quick Tap. This allows you to double-tap the back of your phone to perform an action. This includes things like taking a screenshot or turning on the flashlight, but it can also be used to see your recent apps or launch a specific one. You can enable the feature in Settings > Gestureswhere you will find the “Quick tap to start actions” options.

There are many repetitive and boring tasks that seem like a chore to do manually every time – things like putting your phone in DND mode when you get to work, rotating certain apps to landscape mode, enabling power saving features when your phone’s battery is low. You can certainly do all of this yourself, but it’s inconvenient, and forgetting them even more so.

Fortunately, many Android phones have ways to automate these tasks so you don’t have to think about them in your daily routine. For Galaxy users, you can use Samsung’s Modes and Routines for this, while Pixel users have access to the Pixel Rules feature. Both are also relatively easy to use. On your Samsung phone, open Settings > Modes and Routinesthen configure a trigger (the “If”) and the effect (the “Then”). On a Pixel phone, go to Settings > System > Rules.

If you want more customization or have an Android phone that doesn’t have a similar feature natively, you can always use third-party apps that allow it. Some of the most common include Tasker and MacroDroid, and both allow you to automate any process you can think of on your Android phone.

There are few things more frustrating than having your phone die when you’re on the go with no place to charge it. A power bank can alleviate the problem somewhat, but you won’t always have one with you. In times like these, you can use Android’s built-in power saver or battery saver feature to make sure your battery lasts long enough until you can get a charger. However, you don’t need to manually monitor your battery and turn it on. Instead, you can set it to turn on automatically when you need to save battery.

You can set Battery Saver to turn on by default by going to Settings > Battery > Battery saver. You will have the option to enable it manually from here. If you want to set a schedule to automatically turn it on and off based on battery percentage, you can specify the battery threshold at which it triggers. The process is slightly different depending on the specific phone you’re using, and you may need to tap the three dots at the top right on some phones or look for an option called “Adaptive Battery Saving.”

If you want to do the same thing on a Samsung phone, you can do so by going to Settings > Modes and Routines and tapping the plus icon to add a new routine. Here, select Battery level in the “If” section and Energy saving in the “So” section.