YOU don’t need to wait for spring to reorganise your online life – and doing so can not only unlock extra storage, but protect your devices against bank-raiding attacks.
Here are five essential tips you need to know to improve your tech health.
Notifications, with their badges, banners, and pings, can be overwhelming when there are too many of them.
Plus, they can also lose their meaning if your iPhone or Android is constantly being bombarded.
Say you have 45 notifications from 17 apps – it’s hard to know which notifications are worthwhile and which are simply junk.
Fortunately, you can disable notifications for non-essential apps – so you only see the alerts that matter.
iPhone owners can do this in Settings:
While Android owners should follow these steps:
Moving your pictures and videos from your iPhone or Android to the cloud is the easiest way to free up storage.
iPhone users can do this via iCloud, which Apple outlines here.
While Android owners can use the Google Photos app, which is also available on iOS.
Google Photos gives you 15GB of free storage, whereas only 5GB is offered by iCloud.
To back up your precious snaps using Google Photos, follow these steps:
iPhone owners may get a message asking them to give the app access to your photos, in which case:
There are a few password faux pas worth leaving behind in 2024, like using your birth date, name, username, or phone number.
Ideally, each password for every account you have should be unique.
That way if one account and password is compromised, it remains an isolated incident rather than a catastrophic chain event.
This is why using a password manager can be a lifesaver.
iPhone owners can use the new Passwords app that was introduced with iOS 18, which keeps all their usernames and passwords locked away in iCloud.
Google has its own Password Manager for Android and Chrome users, which not only stores all your unique passwords securely, but checks each one to see how secure they are.
Do you remember the last time you deleted your web browser’s cache and history on your PC or smartphone?
It takes just a minute to do, but can really speed up your tech.
Safari users on iPhone can clear their cache and history with these instructions:
Chrome users on either iPhone or Android can do so by following these steps:
Now is also a really good time to review your recurring subscriptions, and cancel the ones that you don’t want.
If you’re a collector of TV subscription services, it might be time to consider ‘stream swapping’.
Instead of having multiple services on the go, such as Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video all at once, you could just view and pay for one at a time.
Once you have watched the content you want to see on Netflix, you can switch to Disney+, then Prime Video.
There are tons of free TV apps out there that don’t require any piracy – and just involve the odd advert or two.
Here are some of the more popular free TV apps worth trying:
Although, this snippet of advice isn’t only for streaming services, but for the language, fitness and gaming apps that pull us in too.
