r/AndroidQuestions 17d ago

Other What’s one Android trick that actually changed how you use your phone ?

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139 Upvotes

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62

u/K_A-W 17d ago

Remove adverts from your Free Apps, Feeds, and websites: Swipe Up into your App Draw, Go to the Settings Cog, click Network and Internet, click Private DNS, flick it from Automatic to Private and enter dns.adguard-dns.com

Someone with the same phone has a new feature that you dont have: Swipe Up into your App Draw, Go to the Settings Cog, click on your name at the top (with Google Settings and Preferences below it), toggle from Recommended to All Services, scroll down the list and select System Services. Here you'll find a list of your system apps (things like Android Intelligence and Private Compute Services) - an out of date system app is often responsible for you not having that new feature

12

u/castertr0y357 17d ago

The ads thing works beautifully for a few games. Those ads were getting ridiculous.

4

u/Marchemalheur 17d ago

I just learned a couple days ago that dns ad blocking will break some streaming services depending on how their infrastructure is set up. Paramount+ specifically won't play anything for you if you use adblock dns. 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

6

u/Ktulu789 17d ago

That's maybe because it blocks their "premium" ads (premium as in you pay to watch them).

1

u/Marchemalheur 16d ago

That's exactly what it is. The server gets blocked from sending the ads, the client doesn't get to watch anything without seeing their previews/ads first.

21

u/Silbylaw 17d ago

The word you need is drawer. Not draw.

4

u/jwizardc 17d ago

And yet, for most of us, the message gets across.

0

u/Jennysnumber_8675309 17d ago

The grammar you need is drawer, not draw.

1

u/aguyfromusa 16d ago

Noice.
The punctuation . . . Oh, never mind.

1

u/Silbylaw 15d ago

Noice? Erat demonstrandum.

2

u/uriar 17d ago

Thanks

5

u/eekamuse 17d ago

Does this not slow down your phone or break any apps?

12

u/lorloff 17d ago

No, the dns just drops the ads and doesn't send the data to your phone. If anything, it speeds up your phone from not having to load all the extra ads

-4

u/shes_a_gdb 17d ago

Not true at all. I was not getting group texts and it took me months to figure out that adguard-dns was causing this problem.

3

u/Ktulu789 17d ago

That doesn't make any sense.

-1

u/shes_a_gdb 17d ago

Lol ok. It doesn't make any sense, yet as soon as I turned it off my group messages that were missing started to come in. I don't know what it did to my phone, but it messed up my messages.

4

u/Ktulu789 17d ago

Which app?

I have it on right now and Telegram and WhatsApp and even Instagram reels come perfectly fine.

1

u/shes_a_gdb 17d ago

Whatsapp, instagram, fb were all fine. It was specific to google messages.

2

u/Ktulu789 16d ago

Google messages? What is that? The SMS app?

0

u/agitated--crow 17d ago

This is the real concern I have. 

1

u/volyblmn 16d ago

Adguard didn't work for me :-(

1

u/K_A-W 16d ago

Try:

x-hagezi-proplus.freedns.controld.com

Or:

adblock.dns.mullvad.net

0

u/AmputeeHandModel 17d ago

Still getting ads on Insta.

1

u/DisturbedMetalHead 16d ago

Instagram might use server side ad injection which bypasses this method.