How to Reduce Data Usage on Android or iPhone

Table of Contents

• Play Music
• Spotify in Android and iPhone
• Offline Videos
• Check Mobile Data Usage
• User other’s phone
• Misc Tips

Play Music

• Don’t use Youtube to listen to music when no wifi and not really watching.

Spotify in Android and iPhone

• Easily create play lists and add songs into them.
• Support background play in free mode.
• Settings:
  • Data Saver: Sets your music quality to low and disable Canvas.
  • Unselect “Show unplayable Songs”
• Star songs, albums
• Automatically created play lists: “Made for you”, “Recommended for you”,
• Playlists in search page: “New Releases”, “Charts”:(Top50), playslists based on music styles.
• Podcasts: download and play offline
• chines songs, kids songs
• Search non-English (Chinese) songs/singers directly.

Youtube Music and iPhone

• When search choose “Songs”, not “Videos”
• Easily create play lists and add songs into them.
• in free-mode, don’t support background play, download off-line.

Podcasts

• Google Podcasts in Android
• Apple Podcasts in iPhone
• Google play music in Android and iPhone

Other Music Apps

• Pandora

Offline Videos

• Sometimes we may play videos without wifi or even without connection at all (for kids), we can use Google Drive or other apps like Dropbox to store these videos, and downland them as offline.

Check Mobile Data Usage

• In Android, search “App data usage” or Go to Settings -> Network & Internet -> Mobile network -> App data usage
  • We can also disable “background data” for specific apps.
• In iPhone, go to Settings > Cellular.
  • We can also disable “background app refresh” for specific apps.

User other’s phone

• Use someone else (family member)’s phone who has an unlimited data plan like corporate plan

Misc Tips

• Avoid send video files or big images without wifi.
• Send sharable link in Google drive instead.
• Set a limit on lines that use a lot of data.