Just upgraded to a Google Pixel? Change these settings for the most complete and optimal experience.
If you just bought a new Google Pixel phone, or are planning to buy one in the near future, there’s a handful of settings that you should know about before you venture out with your newfound pocket companion.
Modifying some of these settings will be up to your personal taste, but all of them will generally improve the performance and reliability of your Pixel phone. Who wouldn’t want that?
See below for the list of the key changes I always make when setting up a Google Pixel, including why each one is significant and how you can do the same with your own device.
1. Double the speed via Developer Options
To start, let’s tweak the one setting that will make every other task on this list faster to complete: Dialing up your phone’s animations. We’re basically allowing the Pixel to run all of its animations, from opening and closing apps to bringing down the notification panel, in double time. Here’s how.
Open your settings > scroll down to About phone > find the Build number (which should be at the very bottom of the list) > and tap the tile seven times. A message should pop up saying that Developer Options is now turned on.
Go back to your main settings list > tap on System > Developer Options > and then scroll down until you find the animation scale tiles. Tap on each one and adjust the value from 1x to .5x. This means that all of your phone animations will now take half of the time to execute.
2. Turn on Smooth Display
Open up your settings > tap on Display > and then toggle on Smooth Display. While Smooth Display follows an adaptive approach to refreshing the frames on your phone, meaning they’ll cycle between 60Hz and 90Hz (or 120Hz if you’re on a Pixel 8 Pro) depending on what task you’re doing or how much battery is left, the visual experience will be noticeably more pleasing to the eyes than what you had at the start.
