Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) Tips and Tricks

To stop the Photo App or the Music player from indexing your files, place a blank text file called .nomedia in the folder containing your photos or music.

The best way to do this is to connect your device to a PC and then navigate to the relevant folder via your PC.

WARNING: Making your volume or music louder can damage your hearing.

Most phones have their volumes limited by local laws to protect your hearing. There is a way to boost your volume however.

Go to the Play Store and download an App called Volume Booster or Volume+ FREE or Ultimate Volume Booster

You may need to Root your phone for this App to work, but read the instructions in the App’s description.

There is a great app called Moves by a company called Protogeo that makes use of your devices accelerometer to record your movements, whether by walking, cycling or running.

Go to the Play Store and search for Moves.

Smartphones can sometimes get hot when playing play games, listening to music, watching videos, or charging.

This is common and mostly caused when several Apps are running at once, or one App is using a lot of processor power.

Normally there is no need to worry about phones getting a warm while in use as the phone and battery can heat up to 120 Fahrenheit without damage.

However, when your phone becomes unbearably hot and you start having issue with your Apps, then there might be a problem. This might be due to faulty battery, too much charging, or a high workload.

To diagnose this, you can use apps like TempMonitor or Battery Temperature Guard (free) to monitor your device’s temperature.

Both can be downloaded from Google Play Store.

These apps should be able to tell you that your phone’s temp is within normal range.

Normally you can simply insert a SIM card and you will be able to browse the internet using 3G. Sometimes, this must be setup manually however.

Before you start, you will need to ask your carrier or Telco for your APN settings.

Once you have those, go to Settings – Mobile networks – Access Point Names.

From here press Add or the Plus sign at the top right and select New APN.

Then fill in the details your carrier gave you. Then press the menu button and press Save.

To adjust your screen brightness, there are two options:

1) Simply drag your finger from the top of the phone down to pull down your quick settings screen. Then at the top there will be a brightness bar. Drag this left or right or press Auto.

2) Drag your notifications screen down and select Settings. Then under Device, select Display – Brightness. Then choose the desired brightness setting.

You can also select Automatic brightness to let the phone decide for you.

When using your Calendar App, you will normally be in Month view. To quickly switch to Year view, you can pinch the screen to zoom out.

This is useful if you want to quickly jump backwards or forwards through a few months at a time.

To go from Year to Month, you can do a reverse pinch.

To change the backlight screen timeout, drag down your notifications screen and press Settings.

Then select Display.

Then under Screen timeout you can set the screen time out duration.

You can also tell the phone screen to always stay lit when it is plugged in via USB:

Go to Settings – System – Developer Options. Then check Stay Awake.

Note: Developer Options is not always enabled by default. To enable, go to:

Settings – System – About Device – Software info . Then tap on Build number 7 times to enable this secret option.

If you want to access your quick settings more quickly, then instead of swiping down with one finger, then use two.

This should take you straight to the quick settings, however it may not work on all phones and models.

Android manages your applications so if the phone is running low on memory, it will close the oldest running App.

If you do need to manually close an application go to Settings – Applications – Application manager. Then swipe the screen from right to left until you are on the Running screen.

Then choose the application you want to stop and select Force Stop.