Android is the most popular and growing operating System in the Smartphone sector. I’ll bet there is not doubt in this regard. Billions of users are now part of the Android family, but not all of them are aware of the stunning things that are hidden underneath the layers of awesomeness. Do you know that Android has a hidden menu in the settings? Do you ever saw the developers options in the Android settings?
People who used the ICS or earlier versions of Android might have seen this option lying around at the bottom of the settings menu. As Google had hidden this menu on Jelly Bean and later versions of Android, there are quite a few people who know about this hidden treasure and it’s a safe bet that even you saw this option on your device, you never knew what it was indicated for.
Google had hidden this option to developers only, but there is nothing wrong in exploring an open source OS like Android. The developers menu consists of a lot of hidden features through which you can do some high-level operations without even having any prior coding skills or development knowledge. Today we will guide you through the developers menu on Android.
So first of all, you must know the path to the hidden developers menu which Google had hidden for some unknown reasons. (Presumably, Google doesn’t want its users to go crazy by some random clicks in the developers menu) To unlock the developers option on your Android device follow the below procedure.
Unlock developer options on Android
Open the settings application from the app drawer.
Scroll down to the end of the settings menu and click on the about Phone option.
Tap on the build number continuously for 7 times to unlock the developers menu.
Then a message text pops up saying You are now a developer.
Yay! you’re now an Android developer without any certification or coding skills.
Introduction to developer options on Android
Now that you’re an Android developer, the hidden menu is now open at your service all the time in the settings menu. Let’s explore the various amazing features of the developers option menu.
Enable USB Debugging
Most Android users typically think that this option is strictly restricted to developers, this may be due to the word Debugging in it. but the irony is that this is the most widely used feature in the developers menu. USB debugging allows applications on your computer to interface with your Android phone over the USB connection.
Enabling USB debugging is must for a variety of advanced operations like rooting an Android phone, unlocking it, taking backups, installing applications, or collecting logs and screenshots of your Android device. even the most used ADB commands needs the USB debugging enabled to get the complex tasks done. even if you forgot the lock screen password, you can bypass it from your PC if this feature is enabled.
However, this might even open a back-door into your device. If you plugged your device to PC for charging, then any individual might remotely access your device to pull your data. So, enable this option only if it appears to be beneficial to you.
Create a Desktop Password
As we already told that the ADB interface is used to take backups of your phone, here is another crucial option that is related it. The desktop password is used to protect those backups with a password. This option encrypts your backups to safe them, so you won’t be able to access them if you forget the password. So this makes your backups just another Fort knox.
Stay Awake while Charging
Many of you might feel that this is a puny option to discuss, but if you’re an advanced user you will get to know the real value of this option. While doing any development on your device by connecting it to PC, then you will require the device to stay awake to see the progress. You won’t find it easy to change the time out settings whenever you plug-in your device to the PC for some work.
So don’t underestimate even the smallest feature of Android.
Allow Mock locations to fake GPS
Probably this might be interesting to you just by reading the title. You might probably wonder what we indicated by faking GPS, there is the mock locations option in developers menu that makes the Android OS think that you’re at a location where you actually aren’t. This option might be beneficial when you want to fake your identity and location to your friends.
Choose your Animation Settings
Developers option is heaven for customization, here you can even change the amount of time you spend between the switching between the apps. When you switch between apps and screens in Android, the animations come into the act and they fill the gap between the app switches. So you can control these by changing the window animation scale, transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale options here.
You can even speed up your animations, the lower the value in the settings, the faster your animations wilnull