If you are a proud owner of an Android tablet, you know that sometimes it might feel a bit sluggish. Here are some tips and tricks to help you keep your tablet feeling fast and fresh.
First things first, always check for software and app updates. Keeping the software and apps up to date is the best way to ensure that your tablet is as fast and reliable as possible. Go to the about page in the Settings app and manually check to see if there are any new updates for Android.
If your tablet is still feeling a bit sluggish, get rid of any unnecessary widgets. Depending on the type of widget and what information or app shortcut they’re providing, they regularly update and can use a fair bit of your tablet’s RAM and processing power.
Reduce the length of animations you see when you tap on icons open the app drawer, swipe between home screens, and other things like that. Go to your Settings app, scroll down to about device, tap on software information, and then find the build number. Once you see it, tap it seven times in a row to unlock the developers options. Go back to the main settings page and then open the developer settings. Scroll down until you see window translation and animated scale options. Change all three to 0.5 times animation scale. Now go back to your home screen and you’ll find everything feels a little bit faster.
Check what apps are draining the most battery. Go to the battery settings and then tap on battery usage. If you see a particular app or game that is draining a lot of battery, it may also be having an impact on your tablet’s performance. Try to cut down when you use these apps. In the case of Facebook, install the app and then add a bookmark for the mobile website on Chrome or whichever browser you’re using to the home screen and use it through that.
If things are still feeling a little bit slow, installing a third-party launcher could give your tablet that speed boost it desperately needs. Download and install one of the popular launchers like Google Now or Nova, which not only lets you customize the theme and wallpapers, icons and animations of your tablet but almost always makes it feel faster and more responsive.
If you have tried everything and still your tablet isn’t running properly, try a factory reset. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse downloading apps and signing in to everything again, but a full reset and a clean start might just do the trick in clearing out some of the apps you never use and getting rid of cache data and generally just starting fresh. It’s easy to do, just go to settings backup and reset and then tap on factory data reset. Make sure you do backup any photos or contacts you want to keep.
Hopefully, these tips and tricks will help you make your Android tablet feel a bit nice to use. If it is a few years old and perhaps the hardware is getting on a bit, it may be worth investing in a new one. If you’ve got any tips that we’ve missed down how to improve your Android experience, do let us know in the comments below.