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I got tired of my Nexus 5 draining its battery just sitting there in standby. Even if I turned the tablet all the way off, somehow the battery still drained itself (more slowly, but still…). I came up with the tips below so that I wouldn’t have to turn off the Nexus 5 completely between uses. I believe that a smartphone should be in standby and ready to go at all times.
I now get more than a week of battery life in standby.
The biggest battery drain culprit during idle time is behind-the-scenes software — continuously running, polling the Internet, or updating. On a Google device such as the Nexus series, most of that power-hungry activity comes from Google itself. So here’s what we're gonna do. Before we get to the Google stuff, let’s tweak some overall settings and Play Store settings to reduce battery drain in those areas:
First, let’s make sure you’re on the latest OS version for the Nexus 5. In Settings, swipe down to About Phone, choose that, then swipe down to “Android version”. When I wrote this in mid-February 2015, the latest OS version was 5.0.2. Check for OTA updates on the same screen, and update to the latest version if necessary. If rooted, install the latest custom ROM of your choice.
Once updated:
Hit your Play Store icon. Click the three-bar menu at the top left. Select “Settings” near the bottom.
Under “Auto-update apps,” choose “Do not auto-update apps.” (Why? Because that “feature” uses battery juice to download and install stuff whenever it feels like it, instead of whenever you say.)
On the same page, under Notifications, make sure “Notify me about updates to apps or games that I downloaded” is checked. That way you will know if something needs updating.
On the same page, uncheck “Add icon to Home screen for new apps.” Because it’s annoying, not because it uses battery.
Go to your phone's Settings.
Choose “Wi-Fi”.
Tap the three-dot symbol at top right.
Tap “Advanced.”
Make sure “Scanning always available” is unchecked.
While in Settings, let’s turn off some radios:
If you don’t travel much with your phone, disable Location (GPS). You can always re-enable it on demand.
If you don’t use Near Field Communication (NFC) for tap-to-pair features, disable that. You can always re-enable it when ready.
Disable Bluetooth when not using it.
Obviously, keep your device’s screen brightness as low as is comfortable. (The display is the biggest power hog on your device.) You can change the display brightness settings under Settings, Display.
While in Display Settings, disable Ambient Display. (Well, first Google it, because you might actually like the feature.) But it does use battery.
In Settings, under Sound and Notification, go to “other sounds.” Uncheck “Vibrate on touch.” (I have this setting on a custom ROM. I don’t know if the OEM ROM has it.)
When disabling or uninstalling Google apps, DO NOT uninstall anything essential to the smooth running of your phone. That includes:
Google Search
Google Chrome (unless you replace it with another browser)
Google Settings
Hangouts (you can disable Hangouts once you've replaced it with an aftermarket texting app)
Google Now (although we will disable many of its features and opt-out later)
Google Play
Gmail
Now let’s clean up a few apps. We will stay away from system apps, such as Email — because people can get into trouble uninstalling essential system apps.
It’s tough to keep up with every app working in the background or polling the Internet. So, in my opinion, you should uninstall any app that you didn’t specifically put on the phone yourself (system apps not included). This assumes that the app allows you to uninstall. System apps will only allow you to disable them. For example, I uninstalled:
Google Earth
Google +
Hangouts (after I replaced it with Textra)
Google Docs
Google Drive
Google Sheets
Google Slides
Google Fit
Any downloaded apps I’m no longer using, such as wallpaper apps.
For traveling smartphone owners, Google Now can be a godsend — always reminding you of what’s next, keeping you out of traffic jams, and keeping you on schedule. However, with Google Now, the Nexus 5 mic is always on and listening for that “OK Google” search command — which obviously uses battery power.
I found that I didn’t need Google Now at home, where my Nexus 5 sits 90% of the time (I work from home). If you’re like me, (or don't appreciate the privacy invasion and battery use), you can opt-out of Google Now — or at least stop the mic from listening.
We’ll start with the least draconian measure: stopping the mic from listening for the “OK Google” command:
From your main home screen, swipe left until you get to the Google Now screen.
Tap the three-bar symbol at top left.
Choose Settings.
Choose Voice.
Choose “OK Google” Detection.
Uncheck both “from the Google app” and “From any screen.”
If you don’t want Google Now at all (I don’t like it because it’s always updating something or doing something in the background), here’s how you disable it completely, while leaving full Google Search (and Voice Search, by tapping the mic symbol) functionality intact:
Start by disabling “OK Google” voice detection as shown above.
Then, in your Applications, open the Google Settings app.
Tap “Search & Now”.
Tap “Now cards.”
Uncheck “Show cards.”
You will see a message that asks if you really want to turn off Google Now. Go ahead and do that.
From now on, you can still easily search by swiping your finger up from the bottom of any Home screen. And you can still do voice searches by tapping the microphone on any Google Search screen.
I hope these battery-saving features do as much for you as they did for me!
U know 5.0.2 isn't available for the N5 right?
TheContinental said:
I got tired of my Nexus 5 draining its battery just sitting there in standby...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We already have two battery life threads. No need for another.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/battery-life-help-troubleshoot-battery-t2785128
http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/general/nexus-5-battery-results-t2509132
Ben36 said:
U know 5.0.2 isn't available for the N5 right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huh? It's been available for this device since December, just not stock Google 5.0.2.
Hi,
As mentioned we already have an existing battery troubleshooting thread here. Please post your suggestions there rather than create a new thread for the same topic.
Thread closed
Hi,
Working on trying to get multi user working on my Google Home in Oz. Had anyone got it working yet outside of the US?
Cheers.
jemichae said:
Hi,
Working on trying to get multi user working on my Google Home in Oz. Had anyone got it working yet outside of the US?
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was trying to get this to work in Aus as well. In the end I could only get it working when using the ios Google Home app. Then the "Multi user" notification popped up consistently. Just make sure you set the language and region to English US.
I can't get it to work in Sweden either. US version of Home, all languages and regions set to US but I do not get the multi user functionality on any Android or ios device... Maybe they use ip number to verify location before they enables it? All other functionality works fine.
any update on this?
No success so far.. I installed a VPN on my Dd-wrt router with a US based IP number and confirmed with IP location site that the external IP is located in US for all devices on my wifi . Then I created a new Google user on my phone (without sim card) and GPS turned off. Unlinked Google home from previous user and did initial setup of GH with the the new user. The multi user funtionality came up! Success? No.. After training it with my voice it just keeps loading and never finalize the process... Grrr. Hope someone else have better luck!
have you performed factory reset on your GH before seting up the vpn connection?
i am trying to do the same WA but had no time to setup vpn on router.
also with the new features presented during google i/o yesterday i would love to have them sooner than later
I did the factory reset on the GH after the VPN were in place. I will do a new attempt this weekend with an iPhone instead. Will report after.
No luck.. With an iPhone, USA VPN on the router and factory reset on the GH the multi user setup show up directly after initial setup. I can successfully go trough all steps including training it for my voice but afterwards it just ask me do it the same setup once again... It seems like it does not register the data correctly. I will move on. Hope someone else have better luck!
Success
Finally, I did it!
I did a lot of stuff and I'm not really sure what did the trick, but I now have multiple accounts working on my device.
First of all, I have a VPN on my access point with an American ip address.
I also did these all:
Spoofed my phone and the other phone (second account) GPS locations to one single address in the US.
Set my home address on the assistant settings to that spoofed address.
Set my time zone to that zone
Removed both phones' sim cards (and put back in at some point? I'm not sure)
Factory reset the gh, and on new setup set the address to that spoofed address (all addresses the same)
At this point, it's not a matter of Google home anymore. In your phone's Google assistant settings you shall see a new section "shared devices" right under personal info section. Use that shared devices page to add a new shared device (your gh), train your voice and done.
On the second phone, go to shared devices and add a new device. (I never got the blue multi user notification during the process)
Once finished, you can set everything to normal again. Once you did the setup it won't log you out.
Good luck
siavash79 said:
Finally, I did it!
I did a lot of stuff and I'm not really sure what did the trick, but I now have multiple accounts working on my device.
First of all, I have a VPN on my access point with an American ip address.
I also did these all:
Spoofed my phone and the other phone (second account) GPS locations to one single address in the US.
Set my home address on the assistant settings to that spoofed address.
Set my time zone to that zone
Removed both phones' sim cards (and put back in at some point? I'm not sure)
Factory reset the gh, and on new setup set the address to that spoofed address (all addresses the same)
At this point, it's not a matter of Google home anymore. In your phone's Google assistant settings you shall see a new section "shared devices" right under personal info section. Use that shared devices page to add a new shared device (your gh), train your voice and done.
On the second phone, go to shared devices and add a new device. (I never got the blue multi user notification during the process)
Once finished, you can set everything to normal again. Once you did the setup it won't log you out.
Good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks man
Great job!
I performed factory reset on my phone and after installing google home app i noticed that the shared device option showed up. After setting up gh for my user i tried to do the same on my wife's phone but no luck, shared device and other options are missing. I then declared her account on my phone but every time i switch to her account a lot of options are missing for the app like home control, shared devices etc.
Hi guys! Google is rolling out the multiuser support in the UK... without any hope I tried with mine (I live in France) and it works here too!!... go ahead and do it quickly, just in case it is just an error from their side.
yesterday i managed to setup multi-user on my wife's phone but not with google home app as it didn't showed the shared devices option but with google assistant.
steps i performed were:
- setup multi-user on my phone using google home app. i had to go into settings -> shared devices -> add GH -> setup multi-user
- on my wife's phone google home app didn't showed shared device so I started the google assistant app -> settings -> shared devices -> add GH -> setup multi-user
i didn't used any VPN or gps spoofing, the only thing is that the language needs to be set to English US or Canada
Google Home COUNTRY ID
I cannot change country ID anyway ... Any new idea how to get full features from Google Home out of the US?
Google Home Country ID
Thx you very much
My solution
You have to deny all devices to access to location for Google Home app (1.)! All your devices must be set to English US, no other one English work (2.). You will not see to blue "multi user available" but on the other devices with other account you will see blue bar with "link account". This helped me. I suppose to restart all devices after setup mentioned above.
My solution step by step
petrmenzel said:
You have to deny all devices to access to location for Google Home app (1.)! All your devices must be set to English US, no other one English work (2.). You will not see to blue "multi user available" but on the other devices with another account you will see blue bar with "link account". helped me. I suppose to restart all devices after setup mentioned above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip!
I would like to add that this may only work if you uninstall the Home app on all the devices you want to pair to your Google Home speakers before you do what Petrmenzel is writing.
Here is what i did. I assume the secondary device is another person thus another voice than yourself, and not just two different of your own accounts as google cant know the difference between two accounts with the same voice profile.
Uninstall Google Home App on all devices
Change language on all devices to English (United States)
Reboot devices (not sure if this is necessary, but I did it to ensure the language was completely changed)
Reinstall Google Home App on all devices
When you open the Home App, deny the app access to location
If you did not unpair the Home speaker on your primary device it should still be paired, otherwise, pair it again.
On the secondary device(s), you should now be able to see "Link account" as a blue bar in the device list on your home speaker, click on it.
Now it should ask you to train the voice model and all that standard setup stuff, once done you should have two devices paired to the Google home device, and you can once again allow the Home app to access device location and both accounts should stay linked.
To test that this works, simply try asking your google home "Hey Google, what is my name" and afterward having the user of the secondary device ask the same question. If it correctly states your names it should be fully working.
Note that this was tested in Denmark with a US version of Google Home, a UK Version of the Google Pixel phone as primary, and a Danish version of a Samsung Galaxy A8 as secondary
MGraver said:
Thanks for the tip!
I would like to add that this may only work if you uninstall the Home app on all the devices you want to pair to your Google Home speakers before you do what Petrmenzel is writing.
Here is what i did. I assume the secondary device is another person thus another voice than yourself, and not just two different of your own accounts as google cant know the difference between two accounts with the same voice profile.
Uninstall Google Home App on all devices
Change language on all devices to English (United States)
Reboot devices (not sure if this is necessary, but I did it to ensure the language was completely changed)
Reinstall Google Home App on all devices
When you open the Home App, deny the app access to location
If you did not unpair the Home speaker on your primary device it should still be paired, otherwise, pair it again.
On the secondary device(s), you should now be able to see "Link account" as a blue bar in the device list on your home speaker, click on it.
Now it should ask you to train the voice model and all that standard setup stuff, once done you should have two devices paired to the Google home device, and you can once again allow the Home app to access device location and both accounts should stay linked.
To test that this works, simply try asking your google home "Hey Google, what is my name" and afterward having the user of the secondary device ask the same question. If it correctly states your names it should be fully working.
Note that this was tested in Denmark with a US version of Google Home, a UK Version of the Google Pixel phone as primary, and a Danish version of a Samsung Galaxy A8 as secondary
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im in South Africa. I actually had an online chat with a google representative that ended up phoning me to help me out. This is what I ended up doing:
On my phone in the Google Home app I added my wife's gmail account. I then went to Account > Settings > Voice match.... Voice Match was previously unavailable for her. Did the voice training module. Then voila, she can access her account on all our Google Home devices (5 of them). I then removed her account off my phone. Simple as that.
I just got a google chromecast with android tv and under settings - Accounts & sign in - (account)- I have no app only mode settings, these are the options listed
Settings Lock
Your Services
Autoplay trialers
Payment and purchases
Google Assisatant
Remove
does anyone have any idea how I get the Apps Only mode to show up or if something in my account is disabling it?
right now I am using wolf launcher in the meantime but I really want to swtich to app only mode so I can get rid of recommendations
I too am experiencing this issue. Have no problem with the first one I set up two weeks ago. This time, first of two more I received, "Apps Only Mode" (one of the few,, however significant reasons, I'm jumping Roku) is missing. I can offer no solution; normal troubleshooting (my third degree is in computer science, CCNA, and I've got major experience/expertise) gives no joy. I'll do the third tomorrow and hope for the best.
I just got my Pixel 5a yesterday and immediately am annoyed by the Google stuff. I installed the Nova launcher but still get thrown back to the Pixel launcher or tossed into various assistant screens all over the place. Is there any way to truly turn this stuff off via normal settings? I don't really want to root or get custom firmware, but I despise these forced integrations between everything.
I don't want anything launching of its own volition or because I accidentally touch or look at the phone. I just want the apps to launch when I click them, the 3-button navigation to let me switch between tasks, and a simple homescreen to hold widgets and shortcuts I choose. The first reason I don't want the Pixel launcher is because it doesn't' let me remove the stupid search bar, but I also don't want any of the other hidden and implicit triggers that tie into the assistant.
I also find it annoying that the home button opens some search if I touch it while already on the home screen. Is this coming from the assistant too? I didn't yet find any settings in Nova to adjust the buttons.
I'm with you here. Installed Nova for the exact same reason as you. I do this next thing on all my Android phones: GO to settings > Apps & notifications > see all apps > Google = DISABLE... o some phones it can be uninstalled!
Personally I also disable "Google Play Services for AR" but that is personal choice. I also disable a number of other apps that I know I do not want/use.
I suppose I could use ADB to try and uninstall them, but once they're disabled that is usually good enough. The first one though, Google being disabled, "should" remedy all your issues. I too use the three button navigation and hate ALL assistants!
There's a program on here called 'adpappcontrol' that's great for removing anything you want via ADB.
It's basically just a gui for the command line program. It's worked great for me on at least three phones.
[TOOL] ADB AppControl 1.8.0 🚀 Ultimate App Manager & Debloat Tool + Tweaks
ADB AppControl 🚀 Root is not required. Works with any Android device. Can do almost everything you dreamed about with applications. ADB AppControl - the desktop program, that will allow you to easily manage applications on your android device...
forum.xda-developers.com
Highly recommend. Make sure you tip the dev, since he does it in his spare time.
jaseman said:
I'm with you here. Installed Nova for the exact same reason as you. I do this next thing on all my Android phones: GO to settings > Apps & notifications > see all apps > Google = DISABLE... o some phones it can be uninstalled!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could have sworn I already did that, but just checked and it is enabled. Has yours stayed off? Would the automatic Google Play app updates cause this to be reenabled?
I also now found the Nova setting Gestures -> Home Button that was causing this other search to appear if I press the home button when already on the home screen. Setting it to None with the checkbox still set for Only on main home page seems to give me what I want there...
lightuser said:
I could have sworn I already did that, but just checked and it is enabled. Has yours stayed off? Would the automatic Google Play app updates cause this to be reenabled?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine has stayed disabled. I can't speak to whether auto updates may have reenabled it. I always turn auto updates off. I like to see what is being updated on my phone.
jaseman said:
Mine has stayed disabled. I can't speak to whether auto updates may have reenabled it. I always turn auto updates off. I like to see what is being updated on my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they wont turn it back on but i have found in the past that sometimes with a os update they will re-enable.
I updated my Samsung S21 Ultra (G998B) to Android 12 a couple of days ago. After that the default navigation app is set to Google Maps. I tried to figure out how to reset that to Waze but it can not be changed.
Before Android 12 is was just a matter of setting all apps to "not default" and a pop up appeared to ask you what you wanted to use.
But now it seems that you have to fnd the app in Apps and select the option "set as default". You can also choose the links that have to open the app. But when I want to set my default navigation app to Waze things go wrong. For some reason the links do not stay selected and are deselected as soon as I close the window. So there is no way to set the app as default. I already removed Maps but that doesnt help.
I already contacted Waze Support but the only replies I get from them is a simple answer on how to set default apps in Android 11. It seems they do not read questions.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?
I'm using this
Thanks for the reply. Nice app!
But it doesn't work when you want something through a browser. At that point is still goes back to Google Maps, either the app itself or Maps on the internet.