Category: Stuff You Must Do

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Pixel 3 & Pixel 3XL – STUFF YOU MUST DO After Buying!

If you just bought your Pixel 3 or Pixel 3XL, here’s some stuff YOU MUST DO after buying!  While many of you may know some of these tips, I think a few of them can really help you out in case you have not used a Google Pixel smartphone before.

Learn the new navigation: Swipe up quickly to access your recents panel, swipe up longer to access your app drawer, swipe to the right from your home button to quickly switch between apps. Enable Developer options which gives you more tweaks.  Go to System->About phone, scroll to the bottom, tap on “Build number” 5 times until it says, “Developer mode has been turned on.  Tap the back button once then select Advanced->Developer options. In developer options, Enable File Transfer as Default USB configuration so your Pixel 3/3XL will be connected as a disk drive when you connect to your computer. In developer options, change animation scale values from “1x” to “0.5x” for snappier performance of the UI. Need to quickly copy and paste something from your computer or access a website?  Point your camera at your web browser on your computer and quickly access the website without having to write it down.   You can do this with anything such as business cards or anything with letters that your camera can see.  Whether you need to quickly access a website, copy and paste a phone number, or a specific section of a text, you can now use your camera to do it.  For longer things, just take a photo then hit the Google Lens button. For better photos in low-light, turn on HDR+ Enhanced at all times.  Also works great for daylight but can sometimes be slower than using HDR+.  Go to Camera->Settings->Advanced and turn on HDR+ control.  You can also turn on RAW+JPEG control to take RAW files for advanced photo editing and enable H.265 for videos which will give you smaller video files but same or better quality. Want to get a wider angle camera?  Video stabilization is great for all the cameras and it is on by default but it does crop out your video.   Especially for the front wide angle camera, turn off video stabilization and you will be able to enjoy the widest angle camera as video stabilization isn’t that great anyways. Double-tap your Power button to access your camera anytime. Twist your phone to switch camera from back to front, this is useful when you want to switch your camera but your other hand is busy. There are 3 ways to access Google assistant, just say “Okay Google” whenever you want to use it as it works with the screen off, squeeze the phone to access or hold down the home button.  Choose your favorite and stick with it. Have a lot of spam calls and texts?  Turn on Do Not Disturb and set Calls and messages from your contacts only. Screen call when you receive calls from strangers and reply to them using smart replies without ever picking up your phone. Setup your shortcut togggles.  Save a ton of battery life by running your phone on Grey scale.  I like to also use my hotspot a lot so I put that up at the top. Enable “Flip to Shhh” that automatically puts your Pixel 3/3XL into Do Not Disturb Mode.  Also you can check this menu daily to see what you use your phone most for. Setup Screen Pinning – Go to Settings->Security & location->Screen pinning and set this to ON.   This will allow you to “pin” your windows and can come in handy when you hand your phone to little kids or even strangers so they don’t access other parts of your phone. Learn to use the Multi-window/split-screen when you need to use two apps simultaneously.  Swipe up to access recents panel then press-and-hold the app icon and select “split-screen” for seamless multi-tasking. Setup Night Light – If you use your phone often before going to bed on your bed, setup Night Light which will help you get better sleep and easier on your eyes at night by setting the display to much warmer colors that has scientifically proven to help.  Easy way to setup is to set it to turn on sunset and turn off on sunrise.