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Why You Should Look Under the Hood of Your Smartphone Settings
Adjustments to accessibility, notifications, updates and privacy can improve your experience
A quick trip to Settings can make your smartphone safer, smarter and easier to use.
AARP (Getty Images, 3)
Key takeaways
- Exploring your phone’s Settings can help you personalize features, manage privacy and improve usability without much risk of causing problems.
- Software updates found in Settings often fix bugs, improve security and add new capabilities, such as Apple Intelligence AI features in iOS 27.
- Accessibility, Screen Time and app-specific controls can make smartphones easier and safer as people age.
Got a tech query? AARP members and readers are invited to send me their questions about devices, online safety, social media and navigating today’s technology.
From time to time, friends have advised me to go to Settings on my smartphone to change how my phone looks or to fix something that seems off. But I’m not very tech-savvy and am frankly worried that if I go in there, I’ll make things worse. Am I missing out?
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I can offer 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 let you make your phone your own. You can customize the wallpaper that decorates the aesthetic of the screen. Enlarge the text size if your eyesight isn’t what it used to be. 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, as well as the major operating system updates that are unveiled annually. I almost always recommend that folks install them because the updates typically squash bugs, stitch up security holes and, certainly with the yearly ones, add even more features.
For example, the latest version of Android, Android 17, launched in June, starting with Google’s own Pixel devices.
And Apple just launched iOS 27, which beefs up Apple Intelligence on compatible iPhones with the requisite hardware, starting with 2023’s iPhone 15 Pro series. That’s a reference to Apple’s version of AI. iOS 27 compatibility itself dates back to iPhones introduced as far back as 2019, but with more limited features on the older devices.
With Apple Intelligence, Siri not only becomes smarter and more conversational but also gets its own dedicated app. And Apple Intelligence is infused across numerous apps. Among the features, you can reframe an image you shot in Photos after the fact, or create a shortcut on the phone by merely describing what you want in the Shortcuts app; the iPhone promises to assemble all the necessary actions to make that happen.
Siri AI is still in beta, however, and is being rolled out gradually. To get on the waiting list after you update to iOS 27, go to Settings | Siri | Try Siri AI. Apple will notify you when the app becomes available.
Since you asked, your chances of messing things up in Settings are slim. Most of the 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 the Settings icon and begin poking around. I’ll start with a tour of iPhone Settings on a 17 Pro Max, one of last year’s premium models. It’s been updated to iOS 27. 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 Android, which has even less uniformity across models, know that its Settings section covers pretty much the same things.
On an 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 birth date is listed here, too, and you can choose 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 press the left-pointing caret < in the upper-left corner of your screen. Sometimes the words “Back,” “Cancel,” “Settings” or the name of the previous screen may appear 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 settings for various Google services, preferences and connected devices.
Choosing how to connect
The next cluster of settings on iPhones and Android mostly relates to connectivity. You can turn on Airplane Mode to shut off your cellular networks when you’re flying, as well as Wi-Fi, which you can reenable in Airplane Mode.
Separate listings cover Bluetooth, Cellular and Personal Hotspots, which let you share your phone’s network connection with other devices, like your laptop.
Keep the battery running
If you’re starting to notice that your phone is petering out prematurely, tap the dedicated settings areas around Battery. There you can check the overall health of the battery and see which apps on your phone are sapping most of its 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 things like capitalization, punctuation and spelling.
Separate settings are reserved for the Appearance of your phone, including a new slider to customize the controversial Liquid Glass aesthetic on models with the translucent feature, from ultra-clear to fully tinted.
Settings also cover 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 how 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 children 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 control how some or all of the apps on your 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.
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 by eye movements.
As we age, the likelihood that we’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 else’s with the same model is 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 what specific apps are and are not permitted to do.
This column, originally published March 11, 2025, has been updated after the launch of iOS 27 and Android 17.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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