28 Benefits of Developer Options in Android Phone

With Android being one of the oldest smartphone operating systems, it had developed exponentially. Apparently, everyone has witnessed this advance. Starting off with being an advanced operating system, it has now settled numerous options that give access to users’ for using it their way. Perhaps, for this reason, Google team has integrated Developers Options in Android phones. These options aren’t enable otherwise and are exclusively for advanced users. Yes, we understand now you want to know who are ‘advanced-users’ and why isn’t this option enabled otherwise.

What are Developer Option in Android?

Android devices are packed up with some secret set of options, known as Developers Options. These are meant for users’ who want to access them for several technological purposes such as to test a software/app or to write an app for Android devices. These options allow you to simulate app stresses, enable debugging options, capture bug report on your Android and even show CPU usage on screen to measure the impact of your software.

So now we get why are they kept so secretive! However, you can easily turn on Developer Options and get your hand on them.

How to enable Developer Option?

Turning Android Developer Settings is considerably easy. Simply open your phone’s Settings> About Phone> Build Number> tap 7 times on it. Now tap on back option and you’ll find Developer Options prior to About phone.

Benefits of Developer Options in Android Phone:

While developer settings are meant for advanced users, they can be lot more use than we can imagine. Here are benefits of Developer Options in Android Phones.

1. Bug Report: Your phone has bug reports which are there for your view, however, they are available for view only when your device provides. Tapping this option, in top of the list, enables you to view this report whenever you wish.

2. Desktop backup password: You are given an option to backup and restore things to and from your PC. Setting a password will allow you to do so.

3. Stay Awake: Enabling this option will keep your phone’s screen awake anytime and every time it is plugged in. This feature is essentially helpful for developers

4. Enable Bluetooth HCI snoop log: You will be able to capture and analyze Bluetooth HCI (Host Controller Interface) packets. When enable, you phone will capture and place them in a file on the device storage (/SD card/ btsnoop_hci.log) for analysis.

Debugging

5. USB Debugging: This feature allows your Android device to communicate with your computer, via USB. You can also revoke USB debugging authorizations: When you use a computer to debug over USB for the first time, you have to authorize it and set up a keypair.
6. Select mock location app: This option will allow you to set location information for any specified app. It is helpful for you if you’re developing an app that requires location information.

7. Select debug app: If your wish to debug an app, simply choose it with this feature.

Networking

8. Select USB configuration: You can customize how your Android should react when connected with a PC over USB.

Input

9. Show touches: This option adds a visual cue on the screen wherever a touch is registered.

10. Pointer Location: Enabling this will place an information bar at the top of your phone’s screen and helps you know the last place your device’s screen was touched.

Drawing

11. Show surface updates: It flashes entire windows surface when they are updated.
12. Show layout bounds: When turned on, you’ll see edges of all the elements in a dialog so you know where a touch will activate them.

13. Force RTL layout direction: This feature forces screen orientation for right-to-left language support, which is helpful for developers of multi-language apps.

15. Transition animation scale: This setting sets the speed for transition-animation playback.
16. Animator duration scale: This feature allows you to change the duration of animation taking place between opening and closing the app menu.
17. Stimulate secondary displays: You can stimulate different screen sizes via this option.

Hardware accelerated rendering

18. Force GPU rendering: With this setting, you can force apps on your device to use 2D rendering, even when they are written to not to use it. Enabling this feature can make things look great or can even temporarily bork your phone.
19. Debug GPU overdraw: GPU (Graphics Process Unit) overdraw happens when an application asks the system to draw something over something else. Debug GPU overdraw will provide you information on any such activity.
20. Force 4x MSAA: This feature forces multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) that can make things look better on your device, however, it puts more strain on the CPU / RAM.

Monitoring

20. Strict mode enabled:

22. Show CPU Usage: You can view CPU information on your device’s screen, at all times.
23. Show GPU view updates: This setting helps you view any onscreen element drawn with GPU hardware, in a red overlay.
24. Show hardware layer updates: If this option is enable, you’ll be notified whenever any hardware layer is updated.

24. Profile GPU rendering: This setting draws a graph – a visual rendering of how hard the GPU is working. You can either view onscreen or save to a file.

25. Enable OpenGL traces: You can record OpenGL errors with this feature. Enable OpenGL to trace errors in a log file of your choosing.

Apps

27. Don’t keep activities: This feature closes every application so soon as you leave its main view. So you should rather be careful while using this feature.
28. Background process limit: A number of processes work in background on your device. You can limit these processes running at a time, with background process limit settings.
29. Show all ANRs: You can view all the apps that are not responding when running in background by enabling this option.

These are some of the developer options that you can use for special purposes!

Notes:

• These Android Developer settings are available on Android 6. These might differ with the Android version you may be using.
• Warning: Turning on developer options might result in irregular behavior in your device. These options are recommended only for advanced users.