You probably know about the LG G4 by now, what its main features are and main specifications are and what it can do. But I’ve come up with a list of some of my favorite lesser known, perhaps smaller things that make the experience of using the G4 that much better. So without further ado, this is my list of 11 awesome tips and tricks for your LG G4.
Number one on my list is customizing your app icons. If you’re anything like me, you will hate the standard stock icons that come on the LG software. And changing them is pretty simple. Press and hold the icon you want to change and you’ll see a little paintbrush icon in the corner. If you touch that, you can select any of the image and crop it to fit. If there aren’t already on your phone that you like, you can download images from the web. And if you want a truly customized experience, you can always just design one for yourself and load it onto your phone and use that.
Next up is changing your home button combination. If you go into the Settings menu and go into General, you will find one there that lets you change your home touch button. Select the option and then you can drag and drop different tools into your home touch panel on the bottom of the screen. So you can have things like a drop-down button for your notification drawer so that every time you press it, your notification drawer drops down on the screen. Or you can have one there for dual-window multi-tasking. It’s a very useful thing to have and you can change it at the icons whenever you like.
One really cool feature is within Smart settings. You can get your phone to launch a specific app when you plug in the headphones. If you go into Settings then into General then Smart Settings and scroll to the bottom, there’s an option to launch any app you want by just plugging in your headset jack. For me personally, I chose Spotify because that’s the app that I use all the time for music. I don’t use the stock music app. So once I selected that, every time I plug in a pair of headphones, Spotify launches and I can start listening to music stream straight away.
Number four is in the Accessibility Settings, it’s flash alerts. If you go into Settings then to General and Accessibility and go into the Hearing options, there’s one there that will let you set flash alerts. So whenever there’s a notification coming to your phone, the LED flash on the back of your phone will flash.
Another Accessibility option is using your power key to end a call. This is designed for people who struggle to see because it’s much easier to feel a button on the back of your phone than it is to see one on your touchscreen. But it’s really useful and handy anyway. Now once you set this, by going into your Accessibility menu, every time you get a phone call, you can just end it by pressing the power button on the back of your phone.
Number six is all kinds of customizations available with the LG stock keyboard. You can do things like change the height of the keyboard to make it suit your hands better. You can also add or remove the number keys on the top row if you want them there or don’t want them there. And you can even add special symbol keys to go alongside your space bar or you can just remove them if you don’t want them. For instance, you can have one on the left that enables your handwriting recognition. Or you can add special symbols as their own bespoke key like the @ symbol or ? or , instead of having to press and hold the full stop key.
Number seven is light trails in camera. You already know, probably, that the camera has fantastic manual settings and this enables you to do some really cool stuff. Let’s say for instance you want to write your name with a flashlight. All you need to do is set your ISO setting really, really low; set your shutter speed really, really slow. With the shutter speed being really low, then you get a really slow capture. So what that enables you to do is you can (for instance) write your name with a light or scribble and it will pick up that entire scribble. And because the ISO setting is low, it only takes in the stuff that’s really bright, like the flashlight.
Number eight on my list is the Quick Look at notifications in your status bar. When your phone is switched off, all you have to do is drag your finger down the touchscreen from the very top edge and you get to see the time and any notifications you might have waiting for you.
Another cool use of the buttons on the back of the phone is that you can double tap them to launch specific apps. For instance, double tapping the volume button launches the Quick Memo apps so you can just take a note. Double tapping the bottom down button will launch the camera and even, in some cases, will take a picture straight away without you having to do anything. So if you just want to grab a quick shot at a moment’s notice, this is the best way to do that.
One cool feature in the LG G4 is Smart Clean. When you run this program through the settings menu, it tells you if you’ve got any storage space that you could free up by removing files and apps that you haven’t used for a long time or are maybe unnecessarily large. It runs the scan and lets you delete them manually or automatically.
Last on my list are Floating Apps. The LG G4 has a feature called QSlide. If you slide down your notification drawer and then slide it across the top row, you’ll see an option for QSlide. If you put that on, you then get a list of apps that are available as floating windows. And once you open those, you can interact with them or make them larger or smaller, you can set their transparency or just close them. So if you’re browsing the web for instance and you want to make a quick note, you can do that. Or if you want to send a quick message to someone or have a quick look at your calendar, you can do that as well without actually leaving the app that you’re using.
So those have been my 11 tips and tricks with the LG G4. They are definitely worth checking out if you have the phone. And of course, let us know what you think of them if you’ve used them or like them in the comments section down below.
