Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus Tips and Tricks

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.

Android manages Apps very well and some Apps do not have the option to close them specifically. Normally the App will stay running in the background and only close when many other Apps have been opened.

If you do want to close or terminate an App, then press and hold the Multitasking key on your phone. On some devices you may need to long press the Home key.

Then you can swipe the Apps off the screen to close them.

If you find that apps are slowing down your device or consuming unnecessary memory or batter life, then try downloading an App called DU Battery Saver or DU Speed Boost which are great for optimising the Apps that are running.

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

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 and go into their Contact details.

Then press More or the Menu key and select Add shortcut to home.

Then go to your Home Screen, find the Contact you’ve just added. Press, hold and drag to another position.

If this doesn’t work, then try this alternative method:
Go to one of your home screens.

Find a blank space, long press and hold.

Select Widgets, then scroll until you see the Contacts Widget. From here there are various options to add contacts to your home screen as bookmarks.

If you don’t want to hear the shutter sound when you take photos, then there are a few things you can try.

Firstly, some countries have laws to force the phone to play these sounds. Assuming you’re not in one of these countries, then the first thing you can try is to go to the Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

If that doesn’t work, then you can try turning the volume of the phone down or put it in silent mode when taking photos.

The last option is to Root your phone. If you don’t know what that means, then it’s best not to attempt it unless you have thoroughly read about the process. Once Rooted, go to this folder on your phone: /system/media/audio/ui and rename the camerashutter and/or cameraclick OGG files to something else.

Alternatively, on a rooted phone you can use a Root Browser, to edit /system/csc/feature.xml and set the option to TRUE. Then you should be able to go to Camera App – Settings – Shutter Sound – Off.

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.

To take a screenshot on your device, press the Home and Power buttons at the same time. Sometimes you may need to press the Home button first for a second, then the Power button.

Hold them together for between 1-2 seconds and you should hear a camera shutter sound.

To locate the screenshot you’ve just taken, go to your Apps and find My Files.

Then it should be under Device Storage or Internal Storage – DCIM – Screenshots.

It’s possible that they may also be found under Device Storage or Internal Storage – Pictures – Screenshots.

If you want to move the Screenshot to another folder, then long press on the file name. You should see a tick appear.

Then press the More button in the top right and select Move or Copy. Then select the destination of the screenshot.

If you see an insufficient storage available error, or find that you’re running low on your phone memory (not to be confused with your SD Card memory), then there are a number of ways to fix this.

This error can be very frustrating as it often means you cannot install new Apps, and some Apps may not even function properly because of this. We hope this guide is as comprehensive as possible, but if you find other methods, then please suggest them in the comments below.

The first step is to determine exactly what is eating up your phone’s storage memory. To do this pull down your notifications menu and select Settings and find Storage. It may take a while to calculate so be patient. From here you can see whether it is your Applications, Pictures, Audio or otherwise, that is causing the problem. Obviously, if it is photos or music, then the first step is to remove some of these (ensuring you do actually want them deleted of course!).

If it is your Apps taking up space, then you have a few options, as follows:

Uninstall Apps – Go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager and swipe to the ALL tab at the top. Then look at the bottom of the screen which shows how much free space you have. Often you will have very little Free memory, which is the cause of the error. From here, press your Menu button and select Sort by size. This will show you which Apps take up the most space and which will make the most impact by removing. Obviously don’t delete things like Gallery (which will remove your photos!), Internet (which is your browser), key Google Apps and so on. However if you have Apps you don’t use anymore, then uninstall them to free up space.

Clear App Cache (with an App) – For this method, you will need to download an App called Clear App Cache. However, this will only work if you can uninstalled enough Apps to free up enough space to install the App itself. Once installed however you can quickly clear the cache of all of your Apps, which should free up some space.

Clear App Cache (manually) – Apps such as Gallery, can sometimes generate a large cache (image thumbnails in this case) which can be cleared to free up memory. First, go to Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Then swipe from right to left until you’re on the ALL screen. Then press the Menu key and Sort by size. Then choose the largest App by pressing on it. Then select Clear Cache. Do this until you’ve cleared as much space as you can.

Dump your log files – This will only work on some devices, however it doesn’t cause any data loss. It simply cleans up your App log files. Go to your phone dialler App and press: *#9900# Then Select delete dumpstate/ logcat and hit OK.

Move Apps to SD Card (if you have one) – Settings – Applications – Application Manager. Flick from right to left until you get to SD Card. Then simply tick which Apps you’d like to move from Phone memory to SD Card memory.

Clear Browser Thumbnails – This one seems to be a bug in some versions of Android and/or some phones, but is a very quick and effective fix. Simply open your stock Android Brower, which is usually found by opening the Internet App. Then at the top right check if you have multiple tabs open. If you do, then swipe them off the screen one by one until you have none left. This can clear up hundreds of cached thumbnails which never clear unless this process is carried out. It has been known to clear several gigabytes of space for users that don’t close their tabs often.

Check folder/file sizes – The last method is great and involves installing an App called DiskUsage from the Play store. Once you install this it will show you which folders are the largest. You can then drill down to find out exactly what is consuming your precious space before deciding to remove the files or folders. You can also integrate the App with File Explorer Apps to easily manage your files. When it comes to removing files and folders it’s sometimes easier to do that by plugging your device into a PC and browsing the folders that way.

Sometimes while typing long text or SMS messages you will get a message saying Converting to multimedia message. This won’t normally cause a problem, however some users do not want to send a MMS message.

There are a number of different settings to deal with this, however there isn’t really a way to prevent the phone from converting to an MMS. The reason for this is that any message over 480 characters cannot be sent as an SMS message. They must be sent as an MMS. The is a restriction of SMS messages in general, similar to the original limit of 160 characters.

What you can do however is ensure you get alerted when you have reached 480 characters. Then you can decide to send the message as an SMS and continue your conversation on a second message.

To check this setting is on, open your Message App and press Settings in the top right, then settings again, then More settings.

Then select Multimedia messages – Set restrictions and choose Warning. You will now be told when your message is being converted to MMS.

You can also change the settings for Creation mode which lets you restrict messages that go over a certain size. If you select Warning or Restricted, you should get further warnings when your message is really large and may not be handled by the network.

The most common and effective way to copy photos to your PC (from your Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus) is to do it via a USB cable. Just plug your phone to a PC using a USB cable and wait for a notification to pop up on your phone.

This notification usually tells you that your device is charging. For some phones, it prompts the user to choose from several options. Just swipe down the notification and choose either “Transfer Photos” or “Transfer Files.”

For smartphone users who don’t see such notification, you may go to Settings → Developer Options → Networking → USB Configuration then tap on MTP (Media Transfer Protocol).

After that, check “This PC” on your desktop and see if there is a removable drive for your phone. The drive would be named as a Removable Device or it would bear the name of your brand or phone model.

Click on the drive and find the “DCIM” folder. This is where all photos and videos from your camera are stored. You can use the search bar function of the folder to find it quickly.

Using Google Photos to transfer photos on your Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus
Alternatively, you can use Google Photos to copy photos from your phone to PC. This can be done when you sync and back up all your photos and videos on Google Photos. To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have set up your Google Account on your smartphone.
2. Open the Google Photos app on your phone.
3. Then go to its Menu (you can find this at the top).
4. Find Settings then look for Back-up & Sync
5. Tap / check to turn on back-up and sync.

When you do this, all your photos and videos will be saved simultaneously to your Google Photos account (via WiFi). To retrieve these photos on PC, just turn on your PC and go to photos.google.com.

Then sign in with your Google Account, and you will gain access to all your backed-up photos and videos right away! You can click on any photo and download it to save it on your PC. Just click on “More Options” on the upper right corner of the photo, and you will see a download option.

Using Hi Suite to transfer photos
For Huawei phone users, you can use the HI Suite. This program is exclusive for Huawei users, and it provides an easy way to transfer different files from your phone to PC (and other devices). It also functions as a backup device for all data and settings on your phone, and it can be used to retrieve and copy photos to your PC. Just follow the steps below:

1. Connect your Huawei and PC with the use of a USB cable.
2. Go to your phone’s Settings and search for “HDB” on the top search bar.
3. Tap on “Allow HI Suite to use HDB.”
4. You have to agree on certain terms and policies to make use of the function.
5. To backup your photos and videos, tap on Backup and select the “DCIM” or “Camera” folder where your images are saved.

You can access all these backed-up files (including photos) on your PC through HI Suite. Just don’t forget to install HI Suite on your PC too!

Transfer Specific Photos Using Google Drive on the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus

1. Since you are using a Google phone you can transfer your photos first to Google Drive. To do this, tap on the GOOGLE DRIVE app on your phone to open it.
2. Tap on the plus (+) icon from the homepage of GOOGLE DRIVE
3. From here, you can start uploading the photos you want by selecting them from your storage device.
4. To download your photos to GOOGLE DRIVE, open GOOGLE DRIVE on your computer and log in to your account. Choose which photos you want and then from the given options, select to download them into your PC.

Transfer Photos from Google Pixel to a Computer using a third party application

There are also different programs you can use to transfer photos from your Google Pixel phone to a computer. These include Mobile Trans – Backup, Free Syncios Mobile Manager, ApowerManager, and Droid Transfer.

Transfer Photos using MobileTrans

1. Connect your Pixel phone to your computer using your USB cable.
2. Open the MobileTrans app on your computer and choose BACKUP.
3. Once your phone is detected, the snapshot will be shown on the screen.
4. Enable the PHOTOS option from the list of selected data types.
5. Finally, click on START and your photos will be moved to your computer.

Transfer Photos using Free Syncios Mobile Manager

1. Install and launch the Free Syncios Mobile Manager app on your computer. Choose BACKUP mode from the list of choices.
2. The program should turn to the GOOGLE PIXEL to computer transfer window.
3. Use your USB cable to connect your phone to the PC. There is a chance that you mey have to enable USB debugging mode on your phone to allow Syncios to connect.
4. Wait for the selected files to be fully transferred to your PC.

Transfer Photos Using ApowerManager

1. Download and open the ApowerManager on your PC and phone.
2. Connect your phone to the PC via the USB cable.
3. On the desktop version, choose MANAGE found on the top and go to the PHOTOS tab.
4. Choose the photos you want to transfer then click on EXPORT.
5. Wait for the photos to be transferred and remove the USB cable.

Transfer Photos Using Droid Transfer

1. Install the DROID TRANSFER app on your PC and phone.
2. Connect both devices by scanning the QR CODE found on the app’s interface using the TRANSFER COMPANION app on the phone.
3. Once both devices are connected, proceed to the PHOTOS tab.
4. Choose the photos you want to transfer and click COPY PHOTOS.
5. Wait for the photos to be completely transferred to your computer and remove the USB device.

Sometimes you will want to prevent your device from displaying or indexing folders on your Phone storage or USB storage.

To do this, simply rename the folder and place a . (full top / period) before the file or folder name.

This can be done through the Files App or by plugging your device in to your computer and renaming it there.