Social Media platforms are our way of staying relevant – and Twitter sits almost on the top of the list. We all are guilty of spending hours going through feuds and the never ending network of tweets and retweets. The app also has an incredible user experience, where some of the short audio and video clips are usually embedded with the tweets only. So, whenever you scroll through your feed, you would find, tweets with photos, audios and videos all of which start playing themselves, without you playing on any kind of button. This is what would cost you a lot of data on the end of billing cycle. What is happening here is auto downloading of such videos and audios without your permission, so when you scroll down, those are there for your amusement, whether or not you want. Here is how you can get rid of this excess cost –
Go to your account’s Settings. Click on Privacy.
From the list opened, select Data Usage and further, click on Video AutoPlay.
In the options available, turn your settings to either only on WiFi or Never.
Google Plus or Google Photos
Google Plus is another social media platform, while Google Photos is an incredible way of backing up all the photos and videos that Android users click or get on their smartphones. However, in case your settings are not just right, auto upload will make your data consumption skyrocket. In such conditions, you have to, again, ensure that uploads take place once you are connected to your WiFi, and here is how to do it –
Go to your Menu and select Settings.
Scroll down and click on BackUp & Sync.
From the list opened, disable Cellular Data so that your phone only uses WiFi to upload all the photos, and videos.
Another social media platform, specially created to share photographs and videos, Instagram also uses the autoload feature in its Stories so that content gets loaded in the background. This obviously eats up your mobile data until you turn it off by going to Settings. Here is how you can do that –
Go to Settings and scroll down for Cellular Data Usage. Click on it.
In case it is on Default, your app is autoloading everything. Select Use Less Data and ensure your data usage is lowered.
Widgets
Who does not love widgets? These little windows are sliced versions of different apps present on our phone, however some of them may end up burning a lot more data than we expect. Specially widgets of news apps and other apps which have a live feed running, can cost you a lot. So, to cut it out, go to the Settings, and find data usage. You may thus adjust these limits to set your budgets.
One of our most favorite social media platforms Facebook works the same way when it comes to consuming data out of our pockets as its contemporaries like Twitter and Instagram do. You may end up preloading a lot of videos and other content that you might not even consume later on. Here is how you should put an end to it –
Go to the Menu and select App Settings.
From the options opened, click on Videos in News Feed and turn the switch off for this setting. You may also dig deeper and find Autoplay, which you should adjust on Wi FI only setting.
Netflix
One of the most popular video streaming apps Netflix can cost you a lot of data if you play around with it without knowing how to optimize its use. You can always download videos on this incredible app to watch on the go, this way you would be able to use the app only on your WiFI. However, any app that is streaming videos can basically cost you a lot if you do not go around its Settings and do a few quick changes. Usually, different apps have streaming quality, where lesser quality will cost you lesser data. You can even select which quality you want to download on. Just go to the Settings and select whichever combination of Settings suits your needs best.
YouTube
Another old player in the video streaming business is our beloved YouTube which also provides us the option to select what quality we want to stream our videos at. This means you can choose better quality when you are on WiFI, and select lower quality videos wherever you are using your mobile data. You may also download some of these YouTube videos for offline view. Simply click on the Settings and select General. From there, limit mobile data usage to whatever numbers you feel fit.
Google Duo/Hangouts (And Other Video Chat Apps)
Video calling will consume your data, whatever you do. You may select some settings here and there, but all in all it will cost you a lot if you are routinely using your mobile data to do video calls. It is always advisable to enable any kind of compression settings your app might have which would help you with lowering the data costs (and video quality), however, use a WiFi for video calls which would work the best in such conditions without as much hassle. Or cost.
