While smartphones have become a part of our lives now, we install plenty of mobile apps for various purposes. Some require access to your internet connection, such as apps for online services, and some don’t. But there are some apps that do have background data access but don’t really need it to provide some online services.
Most apps use background data for analytics purposes, and this unnecessarily consumes our daily quota of mobile data. However, some apps having access to background data may even steal your private data without you having any notice of it. This poses a serious privacy concern and it’s better you restrict the background data usage for such unfamiliar apps. So here we have brought you a guide on how to prevent or stop Android apps from using data in the background. It does save data and battery on your Android smartphone, but it also prevents the apps from doing some shady stuff in the background.
Why Stop Android Apps from Using Data in the Background
Before following the steps to prevent apps from using data in the background, know what unrestricted background data access can do. Like we said before that it saves your mobile data and battery, but most importantly, it prevents the suspicious apps from collecting your private data from your phone.
For example, you downloaded an offline vault app to encrypt or hide your private data, trusting that your data would be safe. But if it uses the data in the background then you would not want to take any risk with your private files. Or maybe you would not want an offline call recorder app to access or use data and send the metadata to some third-party server for further analytics. So, to stop Android apps from using data in the background, go through the step-by-step guide below.
Step-by-step Guide to Stop Apps from Using Data in the Background
To stop apps from using data in the background on your Android smartphone, you need to go to the app’s information page. Follow the below-mentioned steps. This method should work on most Android smartphones.
1.. First, press and hold the icon of an app of your choice and then tap “App Info” in the pop-up menu. On some devices, there may be an “i” icon or an “i” icon that you may have to tap on to open the “App Info” page for an app.
Alternatively, you can do the same by opening device Settings and then go to Apps or Manage Apps to find a list of all installed apps. Next, you just need to tap the desired app and it’ll directly open the App Info page.
2. Now, tap on “Data Usage” or “Mobile data and Wi-Fi” or some related option that you have on your phone. From the available toggles, disable the toggle next to “Background Data.” This will prevent that particular app from using the data in the background. Note that the app will still be able to use the data when it is open.
3. However, if you want to completely turn off data access to an Android app, then you can enable/disable the toggle next to Mobile Data or WiFi. But this option is available only on phones with Android 11. However, in MIUI (Redmi & POCO phones), there’s a dedicated option to restrict data access for an app. Turning these toggles off will restrict the app from using mobile data and Wi-Fi even when the app is open.
4. On MIUI 11 or lower, there may not be an option to restrict background data on some phones, but you can completely restrict the mobile data and Wi-Fi for an app by following step #3 above.
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Conclusion
Now that you’ve learned how to prevent or stop Android apps from using data in the background, you can use these steps to shut off the background data access for any app on your Android phone. Most smartphones use custom Android skin but the basic process is essentially the same for all. This guide has the screenshots attached from a Xiaomi Redmi smartphone running MIUI 12, but other Android skins like Realme UI, Color OS, etc also have similar options. Just open the App Info page by following any of the methods mentioned above and disable data usage.
Note that applications that heavily depend on background data access like WhatsApp or other messaging apps, turning off background data may prevent new messages from arriving on your phone. So you should only restrict background data usage for apps that work offline and don’t have the need to use the data in the background. Using the options you learned about above, you can even prevent some apps from using mobile data and restrict their Internet access to Wi-Fi only. That’s all from us, keep visiting ScoopSquare24 for learning more tips and tricks related to smartphones and more.
