Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Tips and Tricks

Normally you don’t have the ability to create shortcuts to files or folders on your home screen.

There is a workaround however. Go to the Play Store and download an App called Linda File Manager.

Once installed, browse to a file or folder. Then press and hold on the file and select Create shortcut.

The shortcut will be created on your homescreen where you can hold and drag it elsewhere if you want.

Depending on how your phone is set up, sometimes you will see lag when swiping between homescreens. There are a number of things you can try to fix this, as follows:

First, try restarting your phone. This will fix many problems.

If that doesn’t work, then remove any Widgets that pull data to the phone, such as Twitter, Weather widgets etc

If you have Live wallpapers turned on, then try turning them off by going to Settings – Wallpapers, then changing to a different Wallpaper.

Go to Settings – Developer Options – Window Animation Scale and Transition Animation Scale. Try changing these to 0.5x (or even 0).

Sometimes the problem can be with the phone or operators skin or launcher, so try going to the Play Store and downloading a third party launcher such as Nova launcher or Go LauncherEx. Note: you will need to re-create your homescreen shortcuts, but they are both great launchers.

Another tip is to always press the Back key instead of the Home key when leaving Apps. The Back key will often close the App properly, while the Home key will leave it running in the background.

The brightness of the browser is set separately to the phone’s main brightness. If you find the screen dims or brightens when you go into your browser, then you can change this by opening the browser, pressing the Menu key and scrolling down until you see Brightness and colour. You can adjust it from here.

To adjust the phone’s main brightness, go to the Homescreen, press Menu – Settings – Display – Brightness.

An alternative is to use a third party browser like Dolphin, Firefox, Opera and so on. These all use the phone’s main brightness setting.

Lastly, sometimes Power Saving Mode affects the screen brightness. Go to Settings – Power Saving Mode and change the Background Colour Only mode in there. Power Saving Mode can be found by in the Notifications bar by swiping down from the top of the screen too.

To open a web page in a new tab, find a link on a web page. Then press on it and then choose to open the site in a new tab.

To show the Browser History, open your Android stock browser (the default browser). Then press the Menu key (bottom left) and select History.

To clear history, press the Menu key again and select Clear History.

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 – 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.

Most Android phones only come with a fixed amount of homescreens. There is a way to add more however.

Go to Android Play Market and search for ‘launcher’. These are third-party user interfaces that allow you to customize your phone in many ways. Most of them allow multiple homescreens.

A very popular launcher which supports multiple homescreens is GoLauncher EX.

If you are running low on phone memory, you can look for your largest applications to uninstall.

Go to Settings – Application manager. Then swipe from right to left and select Running.

From here you can see which applications are taking up the most memory and close them.

Your phone comes with a handy widget which lets you kill all running tasks. This is great if you want to quickly free up some memory.

To use the widget, press and hold for 2 seconds on a blank part of any homescreen. Then find the Active Applications widget and install it.

Once that is done, press the widget and it will show you all currently running Apps. Press End all to close all running Apps.

To use your phone as a WiFi hotspot, tether it via USB or via Bluetooth, then go to Settings – More networks – Tethering And Portable Hotspot.

You can then choose from three options:

1) USB – connect your phone via a USB cable. The phone should automatically configure the correct settings.

2) WiFi Hotspot – To turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot, press Configure WiFi hotspot. You will then be asked to enter a Network SSID (this is your own name for the WiFi hotspot). Then choose Security and lastly, choose a password (this is password for your WiFi hotspot which you will enter on your computer).

3) Bluetooth – With this option, you will need to pair a Bluetooth device with your phone. On the other device, ensure you search for Bluetooth devices and your phone should show up.