Catch Connect's Top 5 Tips to Save Costs on App Data
The five best ways to save data usage by changing your mobile phone's app settings It's a no-brainer that the apps rinsing your data are the ones you use the most. The most used apps include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Netflix for the best of us. Thankfully, our prepaid mobile phone service, Catch Connect, has a fantastic app to help you keep track of your data allowance, ensuring you use your data wisely.
The biggest perpetrator of chewing away at data is watching and streaming videos. Nevertheless, it's hard to avoid–Facebook and Twitter automatically autoplay videos, Instagram preloads videos, and YouTube and Netflix do nothing other than play videos.
Here are five valuable tips for saving data when using the most favored apps:
Stop Autoplay Videos (Twitter and Facebook)
Many popular apps have autoplay videos that start automatically when a user browses the app. They usually contain promoted content and other advertisements and are used to entice target markets.
Facebook autoplay videos use around 2.6MB of data per minute, meaning that it takes an excessive 2GB of data per month if using it for 45 minutes a day at best. Luckily, autoplay videos can be disabled or limited to only showing when connected to a Wi-Fi connection. To achieve this, tap Facebook > Settings > Account Settings > Videos and Photos > Autoplay and choose either On Wi-Fi Connections Only or Never Autoplay Videos.
Similarly, Twitter is a prime source concerning data whereabouts. For an average user who sends ten snaps and views ten videos per day, the data usage soon accounts for around 20-25MB per day. This is before considering the autoplay videos running in the app's background, sneakily nibbling away at data without any warning.
If spending a lot of time on Twitter throughout the day, autoplay videos are worth addressing. To stop autoplay on your Twitter app, go to Twitter > Me > Settings > Data Usage and tap either Video Autoplay or High-Quality Video before choosing whether to autoplay the video or disable it altogether.
Pause Preloading Videos (Instagram)
Differently, Instagram preloads videos that automatically play as soon as being found. So, rather than providing a setting to prevent videos from autoplay (like Facebook and Twitter), it has a setting that stops videos preloading. To access the setting, go to Instagram > Profile Page > Settings > Cellular Data Use > Use Less Data.
Switch to Wi-Fi-Only Settings (YouTube)
It's worth noting YouTube is the biggest culprit for taking chunks of data. The video app munches away at a whopping 264MB of data per hour, making it more than worthwhile to connect to Wi-Fi to prevent steep data bills or from using up your postpaid data allowance.
YouTube offers a setting that plays HD videos only once connected to the Wi-Fi. It boosts videovwatching experiences while saving costs in the long run. To connect to Wi-Fi and watch your videos on HD, tap Settings > Play HD on Wi-Fi Only > Upload Over Wi-Fi Only. The setting is ideal if you are a YouTuber who streams and uploads videos regularly.
Lower Video Quality (Netflix)
Netflix is another app which uses up a lot of data. When streaming movies in high quality, it takes 7GB of data per hour. Thankfully, the app allows you to tweak the video quality to save your data allowance and prevent unwanted charges. Go to Netflix > App Settings > Cellular Data Usage > Low. By changing the video quality to low, 3GB of data per hour will be stolen instead, saving 4GB of data which can soon account for a lot.
Track Your Data Allowance
Tracking your data allowance on both iPhone and Android mobile devices is relatively straightforward – there's no need to be uncertain about your data's whereabouts.
iPhone
If you have an iPhone, go to Settings > Cellular, and scroll down the list highlighting your apps in alphabetical order. You'll notice a small number listed below its title that shows how much data the app has used. Next, scroll down to the bottom of the page to see when your device started tracking the usage—it will either show the data usage since activating your device or when you installed the app.
To reset the statistics of your data to keep better track of your monthly allowance, continue scrolling down before pressing the Reset Statistics button and start a new count.
Android
If you are a member of the Android club, go to Settings > Connections > Data Usage > Mobile Data Usage and tap whichever app you want to check by tapping on its icon. At the top of the screen, you will see your data usage for the current month, determined by your billing cycle. Next, click on the Data Usage button if you want to check your history and tap on the icon of the app you're concerned about to dig into its usage.
Catch Connect
Nevertheless, Catch Connect includes a service for easier and faster data monitoring. Download the Catch Connect app rather than digging into your data settings to understand where your allowance has disappeared. Our platform allows you to check your data allowance, expiry date and add extra data for as little as $10.