Google Nexus 5 Tips and Tricks

To quickly hide the on-screen keyboard, press the Back button

If you call someone regularly this can be useful as you will have a shortcut to them handily placed on your homescreen.

To bookmark a Contact on your Home Screen, then first go into your Contacts App.

Find the Contact you want to add to the Home Screen. Then press and hold on the name. Select Add shortcut to home from the options.

Then go to your Home Screens, find the Contact. You can press, hold and drag to another position.

If you want to go to settings, then normally you would go to your home screen, then press the Menu key and select Settings.

There is however a quicker way. Simply position your finger right at the of the screen and drag it down. 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.

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.

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

Face Unlock allows you to unlock your phone by holding it up to your face. It is highly recommended to use the Improve Face Unlock feature to make the recognition faster and more accurate.

First, ensure you have Face Unlock enabled by going to Settings – My device – Lock screen – Screen lock and chose Face Unlock.

Once that is done go to Settings – My device – Lock screen – Improve facial recognition. You might have to do this a few times to improve the speed of recognition. It is also a good idea to position the phone at different angles to your head to improve the accuracy.

If you prefer a different voice when listening to the Google Maps voice navigation, you can select another language or accent.

From the Homescreen press Menu – Settings – My Device – Language and input – Text-to-speech options. Then under the Preferred TTS engine, press the gear icon.

From there, select Language and you will be able to choose from different languages or language variations.

If you like your Apps neatly sorted into folders, 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 see notifications on your Lock screen, the best option is to download an App called NoLed from the Play Store. This will show notifications such as text messages, emails and missed calls as bright icons on your homescreen.

You can choose between very small squares or small icons and these can assigned by coloured.

There are a number of ways, as below. The first two of these may be disabled on some networks/carriers or Android versions however.

1) Go to Settings – More – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you are on the All screen (at the top). Then scroll down to Contacts Storage – Clear Data.

2) Go to Contacts. Then press Menu – Delete. Then press Select all (at the top) and then Delete again.

3) Go to Settings – Accounts and sync. Then untick Background data and Auto-sync. Then go to Gmail (or an account that your phone syncs with) and delete all of your Contacts from there. Then re-sync your phone.

4) Download an App called ‘Delete All Contacts’ and use that as a last resort.

The methods above will delete contacts from the phone only, not the SIM card.

If you want to resize your homescreen widgets, then press and hold on a widget for 2 seconds. If the widget is resizable, then an outline will appear around the widget. Simply drag the sides to resize the widget.

If the outline doesn’t appear or you can’t drag the lines, then the widget is a fixed sized widget.