Why You Should Look Under the Hood of Your Smartphone Settings

From screen brightness to accessibility, you can make the phone your own

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published March 11, 2025

AARP (Getty Images, 3)

From time to time, friends have advised me to visit Settings on my smartphone to change the way my phone looks or to fix something that seems off. But I’m not very tech savvy and am frankly worried if I go in there that I’ll make things worse. Am I missing out?

I can offer up plenty of high-level reasons why you might want to drop by your phone’s Settings, and it doesn’t much matter whether you use an iPhone or an Android.

Settings on either mobile platform is where you can make the phone your own. Customize the wallpaper that decorates the aesthetic of the screen. Enlarge the text size if your eyesight isn’t what it once was. Ensure that privacy and location settings meet your sensibilities.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Plug holes with updates and avoid trouble

The Settings areas on iPhones and Androids are also where you’re able to access periodic software updates that Apple and Google release. I almost always recommend folks install those because the updates typically squash bugs, stitch up security holes and sometimes add features.

Since you asked, the chances that you’ll mess things up in Settings are slim. Most of the more advanced settings where you could theoretically run into trouble are buried.

I don’t have the space to step through every important Setting in this makeover factory on your handset. But whatever device you own, and unless directed by a friend with more technical bona fides to address a specific concern, I suggest you bravely tap on the Settings icon and begin to poke around — lots here to explore.

I’ll start with a tour of iPhone Settings on a 15 Pro Max, one of last year’s premium models. Keep in mind that what you see may vary slightly depending on which iPhone you have, and which apps are on the device.

If you’re on an Android, which has even less uniformity from model to model, know that the Settings areas cover pretty much the same things.

On iPhone, your name is listed at the top of the Settings screen. Tap to get info on your Apple account, payment methods, subscriptions, sign-in methods, family members, iCloud storage and more. Your birthdate is listed here too, and you get to decide whether to receive marketing and promotional materials from Apple.

If you don’t like any virtual alley you’ve gone into, don’t panic. You can hit a left-pointing caret < in the upper left corner of your screen. Sometimes the word Back, Cancel, Settings or the prior screen’s name may be there. You always have a way out.

For comparison purposes, the top of the Settings screen on a Google Pixel 9 Pro XL also lists your name. Tap it to select various Google services and preferences.

Choosing how to connect

The next cluster of settings on iPhones and Android mostly relate to connectivity. You can turn on Airplane Mode to shut off your cellular networks when you’re up in the skies, as well as Wi-Fi, which you can re-enable in Airplane Mode.

Separate listings cover Bluetooth, Cellular and Personal Hotspots, which can let you share your phone’s network connection with other devices like your laptop.

Keep the battery running

If you’re beginning to notice a phone that’s petering out prematurely, tap the dedicated settings areas around Battery. You can check the overall health of your battery and examine which apps on the phone are sapping the most juice.

Further down, the General settings cover a wide range of things, from letting you determine whether to autofill passwords and passkeys to which keyboards to use on the phone and how to handle such things as capitalizations, punctuation and spellings.

Separate settings are reserved for the Camera, Display & Brightness of the screen, and where newly downloaded apps land, either on the Home Screen, App Library or both.

Other settings let you customize the way Notifications are delivered to your phone, the sounds you hear, and the haptics or vibrations you feel.

I always recommend taking a look at Screen Time. If you have small kids or grandparents in your extended family, you can set limits on the type of content they watch and how long they can watch it. Perhaps even more eye-opening: You’ll gain insights into your own smartphone use or perhaps more accurately, overuse.

If you have a more recent iPhone with Apple Intelligence, you will also find settings related to Apple’s new AI system, along with the Siri digital assistant.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Privacy & Security settings, a major concern for older adults. Here you can decide whether to share your location or determine how some or all the apps on the phone are able to track you.

Accessing Accessibility tools

Nor do I want to gloss over the multitude of settings under Accessibility, which Apple divides into tools and features that address how well you see, hear or speak, as well as physical and mobility challenges and cognitive decline.

Android phones do much the same.

Ask the Tech Guru

Accessibility features are also too numerous to mention, but the tools let you magnify the screen, enable closed captions and subtitles, or control the phone by voice or even your eyes.

As we age, the likelihood that you’ll find one or more useful tools under Accessibility or elsewhere in Settings is high.

Bonus tip: Don’t ignore each app’s Settings

Most of the Settings discussed in this column apply to the phone as a whole. But what makes my phone different from someone with the same model are the apps. If you’re like me, you don’t want to treat those apps the same.

On iPhone, tap Settings | Apps, which lists all the apps on your device. Tap them individually to determine what you will or won’t permit them to do. Options vary by the apps themselves, but you typically get to decide whether a given app can access your location some of the time, while you’re using it or not at all.

Among other things, you can also choose whether an app should show up when you conduct a Search on the phone. Or whether the Siri voice assistant can learn from how you use that app.

Those with an Android will also want to check off what specific apps are and are not permitted to do.

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Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.