Nine Key Ways You Can Leverage Android’s Developer Options

The Developer options in Android OS is a hidden menu with lots of great advance options. But before play around these options, you have to enable Developer options menu.

Step 1: To enable Developer Options, open the Settings and click on About Phone.

Step 2: Under this, locate the Build number field.

Step 3: Tap Build number field about seven times to enable Developer Options. When its done, you will see the message “You are now a developer”

What you can do with an Android OS as a Developer:

1.USB Debugging Option

If you want to run Android-related tools on your PC to perform different tasks such as rooting, unlocking, installing a custom ROM, running ADB command etc. then you have to enable this option to run them properly. Without this option, the tools like king root which are used to root your Android device cannot establish a connection between your device and your desktop.

2.Desktop Backup Password

For creating local backups of your Android phone using ADB over USB you can create a password. To protect your backups, you can set a desktop backup password using this Developer option. This password encrypts your backups from being accessed easily.

3.Play around with Animations (Disable or Speed it up)

Moving from one app to another or from one screen to another on Android, you might have noticed it takes some time to show some animation or transition effect. You can change the speed of these animations or disable them completely from Window animation scale option. You can increase or decrease the animation but it affects the performance of your phone. If you have an old Android phone you can disable the animation to increase the performance and speed.

4.Force-Enable MSAA For OpenGL Games

If you are a game lover and play a lot of games on some high-end Android device, then you can turn on force enable MSAA option to get high rendering quality to make 3D games look better. But enabling this option will drain your battery more quickly as compared to its disabled state.

5.Don’t keep activities

By enabling this option on the Developer options screen you will set your Android to force close every app you use as soon as you exit it.

6.Show CPU Usage Overlay

Do you want to know about the usage of your phone’s CPU? Please enable this option. It will show information on the top of whatever app you’re using. You would probably want to enable this option if you are planning to install some unknown app and want to keep your eyes on it.

7.Mock Location on GPS

To set some fake location on GPS you can use some app available on Android Play Store, but before installing that app you need to enable Mock Location option. By using this option, you can trick your Android to think that you are at a location where you actually not.

8.Verify apps over USB

To protect your device from harmful apps you can enable this setting. When this setting is on, Google scans apps installed in your device and prevents or warns about potential harm.

9.Stay Awake While Charging

For some reason if want your phone to stay awake while charging then you can enable this option.

Beside these options, there are also some other options available in Developer options screen but you shouldn’t enable them without understating their usage. If you don’t want to see or use Developer options, then you can simply disable it by sliding the blue switch at the top of the Developer Options screen to off.