Android 7 (Nougat) 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.

Android now comes with some great battery management built into the OS.

Pull down your notifications screen and select Settings – Device maintenance.

Then go to Battery and you will see some useful stats such as the time remaining.

There are also options to set up various Power Saving modes.

Select one of these to really make your phone last the distance.

Be warned that these can limit your device quite considerably as certain features will be disabled in order to conserve battery life.

Depending on how your device is setup, sometimes when Apps are installed, a shortcut icon is automatically placed on your home screens.

This can be annoying for users who want to keep their home screens clutter-free.

To stop then, go to the Play Store and press the Hamburger / menu icon in the top left.

Then choose Settings and untick Add icon to Home Screen

If you find that a particular App is sending you too many notifications, there is a quick way to disable these.

When you receive the notification, pull down the notification screen. Then long press on the notification. You should see a small ‘i’. Press this and you should see the notifications specific to that App.

Simply select Block notifications to disable them for that App only.

By default, your phone will recognise swear words, but insert x’s instead of the word.

To change this, pull down your menu, press General Management – Language and input – On-screen keyboard.

Then you may need to select your voice input system (e.g. Google voice typing).

Then toggle the Block offensive words option.

If you like your Apps neatly sorted into folders, or just need to clear up some space on your home screens, then there is a simple way to accomplish this.

First find the first App you would like in a folder. Then choose a second App.

Press and hold on the second App and drag it over the top of the first App. They will both combine into a folder.

You can repeat this process to add more.

To undo this, press to go into the folder. Then press and hold an App icon to place it outside of the folder again.

While using the standard Android Video App, you can lock the your screen while watching videos by pressing the power button.

This will disable the touchscreen buttons while the video is playing, but it won’t turn the screen off like the lock key normally does.

Note, this will only work on video files that you are playing that are stored on your phone and using the native Video App. It won’t work for videos played within websites, such as YouTube videos or other Apps such as MX Player, which have their own lock screen settings.

The phone has the ability to send quick response text messages if your phone is ringing but you can’t answer it.

To change these, go to your Text Message (SMS) App and press the Menu or More button.

Then select Settings – Quick responses.

From here you can add or edit your reject messages.

While typing emails or notes, you can simply tap the space key twice and the phone will insert a full stop / period.

This option may need to be turned on in the keyboard settings.

This can be found in Settings – General management – Language and input.

If you want to go to settings, then you can go to your list of Apps and open the Settings App.

There is however a quicker way. Simply position your finger right at the top of the screen and drag it down. You may need to do this twice on some phones.

Your notification bar will appear and you can then press the small Gear icon at the top of the screen to go to the Settings.