Your phone can be the gateway to the world, a way to keep in touch with your friends and family or a way to pass the time and have some fun. But it can also be a tool if you develop mobile software.
Someone who writes apps or builds third-party accessories needs a way to test them properly, and that means they actually have to use a phone (or a tablet and even a watch!) Sometimes. Google knows this – because they also need to test apps and various software changes – and has provided an easily accessible set of developer options in the settings of any Android phone.
More than USB debugging
You may have enabled the developer settings and chosen to use the USB debugging setting so you can do things like page load a security patch or unlock your phone’s bootloader. But there is much more in there.
But most of these things are not something you will ever need or should ever touch. Yes, you own your phone and have paid for it so you can do whatever you want, at least in theory, but that also means you are allowed to break it. Most of the developer options in Android will make you think that you have broken everything.
This is because they all provide information that developers need. Sometimes that information will be drawn on the screen, other times it will be written to a file that can eat up all your storage space, and other times it will seem like nothing is happening.
‘Unlocks’ for developer settings
As mentioned, every model, from the cheapest Android phone to the best Android phone, has a set of built-in developer options. Not all phones will have them all, but most of them will be the same. However, you will not find them enabled by default.
This actually makes a lot of sense because they are easy to “view” and most people have little need to use any of them. Doing so makes it easy to unlock the developer screen.
- Open the settings on your phone and find About section.
- Look through it until you see Build number entrance.
- Tap it five times in quick succession and you should see a small dialog box telling you that you are now a developer.
- Close the settings and open them again.
- You will find a new entry in System the settings page called Develops opportunities.
The settings
Here you will find all sorts of things. Some of them seem self-explanatory and others sound really confusing. If you’re an app developer, you probably know exactly which ones you need.
We are not going to go all of them because most of us never have to use them. We’ll get into those you may have seen people talk about.
- OEM unlocking: If the company that made your phone allows you to unlock the bootloader, you will see this option. It’s a slider, and if you activate it, your phone is reset to factory settings. If you have it enabled and decide to disable it, your phone is reset to factory settings. You have been warned.
- USB debugging: This allows your phone to communicate over the USB port on your computer via Android Debug Bridge (ADB). You need to enable this to use things like DDMS or ADB commands.
- Revoke USB debugging approvals: When using a computer to troubleshoot via USB for the first time, approve it and configure a key pair. This setting undoes all of these and forces you to do it again.
- Window animation scale: Sets the speed for playing window animations. A lower number is faster. Changing this can make the user interface of your phone feel faster.
- Transition animation scale: Sets the speed for playing transition animations. Again, lower is faster. Changing this can make the user interface of your phone feel faster.
- Do not save activities: This setting destroys (as in, forces everything closed) any application as soon as you exit the main view. Whatever you may have heard on the internet, nothing good can come out of this.
- Background process limit: This allows a custom setting that determines how many processes can run in the background at once. Another one most of us should not fiddle with as often, if at all.
Clearly, most of us do not need the majority of these options. Also, getting in there and pressing things to press them can really make bad things happen. But it’s always good to know what can be done, even if we never intend to do it.
Hopefully this clears up a few questions about these cryptically worded options and options!