10 Tips to Make Android Faster (For Free)

If your Android phone is running slower than it used to or not as fast as you think then this article is for you. I'm gonna be going over 10 specific things you can do to potentially speed up your Android phone, so with all of them put together you should almost definitely see an improvement.

1. Uninstall Apps Which You Never Use :

First up is obviously you should uninstall any apps which you never use can definitely improve performance of Android Phone and are just taking up space in the App Store. You can view a list of apps installed and how much space each is taking up. It might look a little bit different depending on the version of Android but you could probably figure it out and it might also show the last time you use the apps.

So you can just start with the biggest apps you never use and work down from there having fewer apps installed means fewer things potentially trying to fight in the background and will free up flash storage which that in itself can potentially improve performance of Android. Also here's something really important as you probably know a lot of phone manufacturers include a ton of bloatware and pre-installed junk apps that may seem like they can't be uninstalled meaning if you select them on home screen and go to drag them you don't have the usual option to uninstall them.

But there is another way to do this through their app info menu, so getting to this menu will be different depending on your Android version and manufacturer but one simple way is, go to Setting then go to Battery option, scroll down you will find Battery usage option, click on that. You will find percentage of how much mobile's hardware and software use the battery, click on Software. You will get the installed apps and how much every app uses the battery, click on that app which you want to uninstall and at the below you will find the App info option. No matter how you get to it once in the app info menu you'll see a lot of options such as for stop some permissions stuff like that.

But here's the key you see with normal apps you can uninstall regularly. You'll also see the option to uninstall here but with bloatware pre-installed apps that can't be uninstalled. You should have another option here called disable which effectively does the same thing. Now depending on your manufacturer it may or may not actually remove the apps files from the phone but at least the app will be removed from the home screen and won't run in the background or anything unless you re-enable them. So for bloatware sometimes that's as close to uninstalling as you can get but still uninstalling unused apps and disabling bloatware should be one of the first things to try to improve Android performance. 

2. Stay Up To Date : 

The next obvious thing to do is make sure your phone stays update which helps to speed up Android phone performance. obviously this isn't something you have complete control over because a lot of Android manufacturers take their sweet old time pushing new Android versions if they do it all for some older phones but if you do have updates available that you've been putting off you should stop doing that, usually they do introduce optimizations and system performance improvements. That will make your phone run better, not to mention you need to stay up-to-date for security patches. Because nothing slows down a phone more than malware and nothing opens up your phone to malware worse then not being update.

How To Update Android Phone : Go to Setting  >System  >System Updates  >Check For Updates

3. Use Lite Version of Apps :

One thing you can do is start using light versions of apps which increase Android performance. A lot of the most popular apps have alternative light versions that take up less space and aren't so loaded. So some examples include Facebook Lite, Twitter Lite. Now unfortunately sometimes these versions are only available in certain countries which is pretty stupid so just be aware that but if they are available it's worth trying them.

20 Best Lite Version of Android Apps To Save Your Data and Battery : 

1. Facebook Lite 
2. Messenger Lite
3. Opera Mini
4. UC Browser Mini
5. Aloha Browser Lite
6. Camera 360 Lite
7. Twitter Lite 
8. LinkedIn Lite 
9. Skype Lite 
10. Firefox Lite
11. YouTube Go
12. Google Go
13. Google Maps Go
14. 360 Security Lite
15. myMail
16. Parallel Space Lite
17. Spotify Lite
18. Lite Music Player
19. Clean Master Lite
20. Amazon Kindle Lite

You can use this apps on your Android Phones. These apps can save your data as well as battery and improves the speed of your Android Phone.

4. Use a Static Wallpaper Instead of a Dynamic Wallpaper :

Next thing you can do is make sure you use a static wallpaper instead of a dynamic wallpaper feature available on a lots of phones these days. This has several benefits because dynamic wallpapers can use a lot more resources than you might think. For example the ones that move around while your phone moves around are using the gyroscope constantly and take some extra processing power to keep updating the wallpaper. Even basic video wallpaper still might take up slightly more resources than a static image and depending on how old or low-power your phone is it might be significant.

5. Reduce the Amount of widgets :

Next is to reduce the amount of widgets have on your home screen which increase Android performance bit. If you have a ton of widgets and barely even use most of them, this could be taking up a lot of resources. It's not as bad as if you have all the widgets apps open at once but it's still going to mean the system has to keep more things refreshing in the background to keep those widgets updated assuming they have live updating information.

This will be less of a deal for widgets that are static like just showing a shortcut button or something but still having a ton of them could severely slow down your home screen. This is just speculation on my part but I'd start by removing the widgets for apps that are themselves slow because if the app is always really lagging and slow then chances are the widget might have a similar effect so try that.

6. Use a Lightweight Launcher :

One thing to try, is using a different launcher. One of the good things about Android is you can customize pretty much everything about the phone even the launcher itself which is basically the overall skin for Android. Now I just use the Stock Android launcher myself so I can't offer any personal recommendations on lightweight launchers but you could probably just search for lightweight launchers on Google and find some good reviews some specific ones.

I saw a lot of people mention include Lean Launcher, Evie Launcher and KISS Launcher. These will change pretty much the entire look of Android. So which one you go for will totally be down to preference. Of course be careful if you go to install a ton of new launchers make sure you uninstall the ones that you don't end up using or else that will just be like more wasted space like we talked about before.

15 Free Android Launchers That are Free, Lightweight and User-Friendly : 

1. Microsoft Launcher
2. Pixel Launcher
3. Asus ZenUI Launcher
4. POCO Launcher [ XiaoMi MIUI ]
5. Action Launcher
6. ADW Launcher
7. Apex Launcher
8. Nova Launcher
9. Hyperion Launcher
10. Lawnchair Launcher
11. Smart Launcher 5
12. Evie Launcher
13. KISS Launcher
14. Customized Pixel Launcher
15. Ratio Launcher

7. Use Lightweight Browser :

Next tip to increase performance of Android phone is which web browser you use. Specifically using a more lightweight browser instead of Google Chrome which is probably the default. Google Chrome is a good browser but it's notorious in how much resources it takes up both on desktop and mobile. There are plenty of other options you can try. You've probably heard of such as Firefox, brave browser, opera or even Microsoft edge.

Some of these also even have separate light versions, like with Firefox there is Firefox lite which is only 5 megabytes to install, also opera has Opera Mini which is the same idea. These lightweight versions might have fewer features obviously but depending on how slow your phone is if you have to prioritize performance they're definitely worth trying at least.

8. Restrict Options in Battery :

Next up we can do some detective work to determine which apps are using the most resources and then take care of them in several ways which definitely improve Android performance. So what we can do is go into the Settings and then the battery menu. This might look different depending on your phone manufacturer but somewhere in there you'll probably be able to find a battery usage menu, showing battery usage of different apps. Now you'll need to do a bit of critical thinking here because obviously if you use an app all the time it's likely going to use a lot of battery. So you'll have to look at what percentages each app is using and try to decide whether it seems reasonable compared to how much other apps are using based on how long you use them.

Like if you use YouTube for several hours a day and it uses 30% battery and you see Facebook uses the same amount of battery after just using it for one hour, clearly it's more power hungry. And we can assume if it's using a lot of battery power that probably means it's either using a lot more processing power while it's running or it's running in the background sucking down battery life even when you're not using it. Again this isn't something I can just tell you as a rule like oh if it uses more than 10% per hour it's too much because it's all relative and you'll have to just base it on your experience. In any case though once you've found an app that you believe is taking up more than its fair share of system resources. 

We can initiate phase 2 of this tip, which is to limit its ability to do that. Through the battery menu we can click on an app and it should take you to a battery menu for the app this can also be accessed from the same app info menu. Here you'll have a lot of options to restrict the app depending on your version of Android. In Android 10, there's an option to restrict battery usage in the background which should help. There's also a battery optimization option but that's usually enabled for everything by default anyway. You can also do more by going to the app info menu and selecting mobile data and Wi-Fi or whatever equivalent. Here for example you can stop an app from using background mobile data.

9. Data Saver :

The next tip is kind of related to above and also involves limiting background data usage but for basically all apps at once this time and it has to do with the data saver feature introduced in Android 7 which make Android work faster. This can be accessed by going to the settings and then network and Internet and then data saver. You can see the description which, it prevents some apps from using data in the background and may even limit data usage of apps you're using. If you do have a lot of apps all using background data and taking up resources this may help and if there are apps that you don't want to be restricted at all you can always exclude them.

How Do I Turn On My Data Saver ?

• Go to Setting.
• Then go to Wireless and Network.
• Go to Mobile Data.
• You'll find Data Saver, just click on that and make it On.

10. Remove Animations :

How to Make Android Faster with Developer Options 

Finally we're up to number 10 but stick around here because I have a couple extra bonus tips to Make Android Faster. This tip is to actually speed up or remove animations in Android which could make it feel a lot snappier. You'll have to activate developer mode for this which is really easy.

How To Activate Developer Mode :  

• You just go to Settings.
• Then go to System.
• Then go to About Phone.
• And then find where it says Build number. 
• Just keep tapping on that until it says, "You're a Developer".

If you can't figure it out. Just Google your phone model and developer mode and look for instructions and the developer options can then usually be found in system and here we want to look for several options that all say animation scale. This just determines how fast animations occur like opening apps 0.5 X means, it takes half as long or you can turn them off completely. So you'll have to do this for each of them if your phone is really under powered then turning off animations might make a minor difference but should at least make the phone feel snappier in any case.

Alright so these are the 10 main tips to make Android performance better but here's a couple more that are worth knowing.

11. Avoid "Task Killer" Apps :

Avoid any task killer apps these don't do much and oftentimes just use ups more resources themselves. Android manages in active processes differently than a regular computer so just killing inactive apps just for its own sake won't help and will actually slow things down when you go to open that app again because it has to reload completely. So it's better to just let Android manage things itself and use settings, we talked about in this article so it can do a better job.

12. Factory Reset :

The other tip is kind of like a last result which is a factory reset of your phone. If you've had your phone for a really long time and it's super slow no matter what you try this might be your best bet. Obviously this is something you need to consider carefully because it will likely be a pain to do properly because sure you could backup your phone, do a factory reset and then restore it but that might just restore all the crap slowing down your phone again. So you can try that first but the ideal thing to do is literally wipe it and start from scratch manually reinstalling only the apps you actually use and setting it up like a new phone.

If you do this you'll obviously have to be absolutely certain that you back everything up which might be difficult because you might have some apps that you're using that don't even allow you to backup and restore data from them. So this is one you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not it's worth it.

Now you should have a lot of new info for things you can try to make your Android phone run faster. Let me know how it goes down, in the comments. If you want to keep reading I'd recommend another article I made recently about how you can make your Windows PC faster too. So if you want to check that out you, can just click that right here.


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