Settings mode for developers does not turn on. Android Secrets: Engineering Codes and Developer Mode

The Android operating system is attractive for its customization. The wide range of options for customizing the interface and functions of a smartphone became an additional tool in Google’s marketing campaign at the inception of Android OS. We have already talked about fine-tuning Android system sounds in the publication.
Today we’ll look at how to open additional developer features, activating the corresponding mode in the device system.

How to enable developer mode on Android

To enable developer mode On your smartphone, follow these steps:

1. Open your phone Settings and find the About phone item. Typically this block is located at the very end of the list of available options. The name of the setting may also differ: Phone information, Information or something like that
   
   
2. Now we need to find the line in which the Build Number of our firmware will be written.
   This item can be immediately in the menu About the phone, or can be placed in one of the sub-menus, such as About the firmware, Additionally and others
   
   
3. It's a small matter. We need several times (usually 7 touches) in a row quickly tap(click) on the item Build number.
   Just getting started" tap"finger across the screen above the desired item. After 4-5 clicks, a warning will pop up with content like: You're almost there. 3 steps left- or something like that. This means we are doing everything right
   
   
   We don’t stop and continue to tap on the screen a few more times. Don’t be afraid to miss the notification that the developer mode activation was successful, even if you don’t have time to stop, extra clicks will not affect the operation of the system in any way and will not turn off the Developer Features.
   Finally, we will see a notification: You have become a developer!
   
   
4. Actually, that's all that needed to be done. To make sure that functions for Android developers are now available to us, open Settings and look for the corresponding menu item there. It will probably also be located somewhere at the bottom, next to the section About the phone
   
   

How to disable developer mode on Android

By and large, the presence or absence of an active menu item for developer functions does not in any way affect the standard operation of the smartphone. If desired You can simply turn off developer mode the corresponding slider in the settings of the mode itself

However, to this point " not an eyesore" or in any other case where it needs to be removed, you can get rid of it completely.
Logically, it would be acceptable to assume that disable developer features You can also repeatedly click on Build number in the phone information. However, it is easy to verify that this action only works to enable it, so if the mode is already activated, we will receive the following notification:

To disable developer mode on Android you need to do the following:

What is Android developer mode? Useful features

Usually the description of the function is placed at the beginning of the article, in this case we decided to deviate from the rule and make an exception.
If you opened up features to developers with specific intentions, then you can start implementing them. If you did this in order to expand your general understanding of how the system works or just out of curiosity, then below we will provide several menu items from functions for developers that can be useful for the average user.

The remaining functions for developers, in our opinion, are of less interest to ordinary users. But, of course, you can always use those system features that most other owners of Android OS devices do not use.
Make backups and be careful.

It is difficult to find an operating system for mobile devices that could boast the same flexible settings as Android. Here you can customize almost every little thing. That's why Google's OS finds more and more admirers every day.

However, not everyone knows that some of the useful “tricks” are hidden from prying eyes. Today I will tell you how to enable Developer mode in Android, which allows you to get even more useful features in system customization. It should be noted right away that up to OS version 4.2 inclusive, this option was not available by default, but in new versions it has been removed from users.

It should be remembered that it was not in vain that the manufacturer hid from “inexperienced eyes” the opportunities that this menu opens up for you. Be careful and do only what you are 101% sure of.

How to hide “For Developers” mode

To hide the developer menu, go to the list installed applications, find the “Settings” item there, select “Application information” and delete its data. Now the “For Developers” menu is hidden again.

There are two ways to become a developer: study for 4–100,500 years at university or click on the build number 7 times in the settings of your Android smartphone. After weighing all the pros and cons, I decided today to tell you in more detail about the developer menu that Google “hid” in its operating system. You've probably heard about this item, but for 90 percent of users, their experience with this menu ends with enabling USB debugging mode. Maybe in vain?

In general, the menu for developers includes approximately 30 items; if we talk about some custom firmware (for example), then there are even more of them. IN this material I have collected those parameters that, in theory, could at least somehow be useful to ordinary users.

Backup password

If you're in the know, you probably know that using ADB on your computer you can create full backups of Android devices (you can, of course, also restore data). After activating this “Password for backup…” function, in order to make a backup you will need to enter a password. Quite a useful feature that will be appreciated by users who like to keep everything under lock and key. The main thing is not to forget this magical combination of numbers and letters.

Active mode

Just move the slider next to the words “Keep the screen on,” and the screen will not go dark while charging (or when the device is connected via USB to the computer). In normal settings, the maximum time after which the phone will “go” to sleep mode is 30 minutes (minimum – 15 seconds). If developers really often resort to using active mode, then ordinary users may find this function completely useless or less useful.

Fictitious locations

If you are a very important person, if you are constantly imagining surveillance or “conning” friends on Foursquare (I still can’t come to terms with the fact that the check-in app is now called Swarm) is your hobby, then the ability to replace real location coordinates with fake ones is something just what the doctor ordered. To do this, you need to download any application on Google Play designed for these purposes (for example, Location Spoofer, it will be quite enough), and enable the “Fictitious locations” item in the menu for developers. After this, you can safely lie on the couch all summer and just occasionally upload photos from the Internet of some wonderful resort to Instagram.

GPU acceleration

Some applications are designed to not use 2D rendering by default. Based on this, it becomes clear that by activating the “GPU acceleration” item you can improve the performance of some programs (usually this applies to games). But here everything is like in that joke about the blonde and the possibility of meeting a dinosaur on the street right now - 50/50 - the application will either work better or stop running altogether. In short, you can’t do without experiments here.

Background process limit

Another really useful feature in the menu for developers. Thanks to this parameter, you can control the number of background processes (set from 0 to 4). Purely theoretically, changing the number of applications that the device should keep in memory can improve autonomy and also speed up the system (relevant for devices with a small amount of RAM). Of course, you need to be extremely careful not to “break anything,” but limiting processes does not affect standard services, so you can be more or less calm.

4x MSAA activation

If you have a fairly powerful device (but not a flagship) and you bought a good (and quite resource-demanding) game on Google Play, but the number of frames per second leaves much to be desired, then you shouldn’t immediately get upset and get it into your head that you wasted your hard earned money. After all, in the developer menu you can activate quadruple MSAA anti-aliasing in OpenGL ES 2.0 applications. There is just one nuance - you can immediately forget about normal autonomy. In this case, it is better not to go far from the outlet.

System animation speed

Google also provided the ability (almost out of the box) to change the speed of animation in the system (adjust the opening time of all these windows and pop-up menus). The item is called “Animation Speed”. Here you can select not only this very speed (from 1x to 10x; the higher the number, the slower the animation), but also disable it altogether. The latter feature will be useful in two cases: you need to speed up navigation or you have been afraid of animations since childhood. Anything can happen.

In the custom firmware CyanogenMod, the twelfth version of which I am currently using, the menu for developers also offers to activate additional reboot options (appears after holding down the power key for a long time): you can restart the interface or go into recovery mode. It is also possible to enable and disable superuser mode. Well, you can make the device itself switch to mobile network when the Wi-Fi signal is weak.

Let me remind you that the menu for developers is not shown out of the box. To activate it, you don’t need to install anything, just go to the item with information about the phone and click on “Build number” seven times. Ready. After this, a new tab “For Developers” will be displayed in the general settings.

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.

And sometimes, in order to perform a number of certain system actions on an Android-based mobile device (say, setting a memory card as the main storage or enabling USB debugging), Android developer mode is required. What is it and what is it eaten with, how to activate it and how to disable it - all these pressing issues will be discussed in today’s material on the IT blog site

Android developer mode provides the user with additional functions and capabilities that will certainly be useful when recording the display when using adb shell commands, installing custom recovery, data recovery and other tasks. The range of features available in this mode is truly huge. To look at it, you should definitely look at all this diversity yourself.

Important Note: the following will describe the default visual menu scheme, available in almost all phones without exception: LG, Moto, Nexus, HTC, Sony Xperia, Pixel, Samsung. Upon careful observation, you will notice that on individual devices (Xiaomi, Meizu, ZTE) the corresponding menu elements have a different name or are contained in a different hierarchical branch of the menu structure. If you are unable to find the menu item specified in the instructions immediately, study the “Advanced” section and similar menu subcategories.

How to enable Android developer mode on your phone or tablet?

The procedure for activating the menu on all gadgets with Android 6, 7 and previous versions on board is performed in a completely identical manner.

To access Android Developer Mode, repeat the following steps:

1. Tap on the Settings icon and at the bottom of the menu that opens, expand the “About tablet” or “About phone” branch. In my case, the menu item I needed was called “Help”.

3. Finally, the final point in our study of the structure of the options menu will be the “Build Number” option. Click on it 7 times in a row, and as a result, the message “You have become a developer!” will appear on the screen. This will indicate that we have achieved our goal - Android developer mode is enabled.

Note: After a few clicks (about 3-4), messages will appear on the screen indicating that Android Developer Mode will soon be activated. This will indicate to us that the actions performed were correct, so pay attention to them.

As a result of these manipulations, a new category will appear in the settings menu - “For Developers”.

On some models you will have to manually set the mode trigger to the “On” position, but on most devices you don’t need to do this - everything works just the same.

In theory, this technique may not be valid on a number of devices with a significantly modified version of the OS, but in my experience this has never happened. Everything worked great on many Chinese-made devices.

How to deactivate Android developer mode and eliminate the “For Developers” settings menu item?

How to get rid of a new menu item and how to disable the mode itself is asked on the Internet no less often than about its activation.

Standard OS settings allow you to disable developer mode using a simple switch located in the same section of the “For Developers” menu. However, when it is deactivated, the menu element itself does not go away and remains “hanging” in its place. If you want to get rid of it for good, follow these iterations:

1. Open Settings -> Applications and activate the function to show all installed programs.

2. Find the program called “Settings” in the list and tap on it.

3. Now open the “Storage” section.

4. Click on the “Erase Data” button

5. After a moment, a warning message will appear in front of you stating that all information about the selected program will be permanently deleted, and there will be no way to restore it. This applies to existing work accounts, settings, databases and other OS configuration elements. However, there is no need to fear that all this will happen. In fact, nothing bad will happen, so you can safely click on the “OK” button and confirm your decision.

As a result of all the actions taken, the “For Developers” menu section will disappear from the visual options menu.

On a number of gadgets of certain brands, the “Erase data” option is not available for the “Settings” software module. If this is the case, then eliminating the developer mode menu option will only work when you return the device to factory settings, thereby losing user information.

If you decide to use this technique, first create a backup copy of your data in one of the external storages (synchronization with account Google). When this is done, open the Settings -> Backup & Reset menu.

In this menu section, select the “Reset settings” option.

After reading the warning message, click the “Reset device” button, unless you have decided not to do so. After this, all user data will be deleted, and you will receive a phone completely reset to factory settings, to which you can “screw” the old address book, a list of downloaded applications and other OS parameters.

So we figured out what Android developer mode is and how to use it. Its functionality is really great, but be careful with it. As a result of some operations in the “For Developers” menu, you may end up with a faulty phone, periodic or system errors, or its complete inoperability.

Important Note: The editors are not responsible for malfunctions of your phone and loss of data resulting from experimental handling of the developer menu. You perform all actions with it at your own peril and risk, so you should first familiarize yourself with the item that you are going to change, and not do it thoughtlessly.

Very often we may need to enter the so-called developer mode on an Android smartphone or tablet. It is needed, for example, when we want to flash the phone, calibrate the battery, or connect the device to ADB on the PC. In general, those who will use DevTools understand what it's about. we're talking about. So, let's look at how to enable developer mode on Android.

Activated this function quite simple, but there are some nuances. In each of the smartphones, for example, Meizu, Xiaomi or Samsung, it is located in different places.

In “pure” Android, without various add-ons or shells, regardless of its version (2.3, 4.4.2, 5.1.1, 6.0.1, 7.0, etc.), the setting is in the same place. The path to it is shown in the first method.

Enable on “pure” Android

So, let's look at how to enter developer mode on bare Android. You can see it, for example, in the same Google Pixel.

1. Pull down the notification shade and tap on the gear icon. This is the entrance to our settings.

1. Scroll the contents of the window to the very bottom and select the item marked in the screenshot. In Android 7.1 it is called “About tablet”.

1. Next, you need to quickly start clicking on the item indicated in the screenshot until you see a notification that developer mode is unlocked.

1. We go up one level in the settings and see that a new item has appeared here. This is exactly what you need.

This is what the developer settings on Android 7.1 look like.

Samsung and TouchWiz

Let's also think about the many owners of Samsung gadgets. The fact is that they have a proprietary shell installed that complements the operating system from Google, and it’s called TouchWiz. So, in order to enter and activate developer mode in Samsung Galaxy you need to do the following:

1. In the same way as in the case of “pure” Android, lower the notification bar and tap on the settings gear.

1. Scroll the contents to the very bottom and select the section indicated in the screenshot.

1. Let's move on to information about software phone.

1. We begin to repeatedly click on the assembly version. Until you see a message indicating that developer mode has been successfully activated.

1. We return to the main settings and see a new item that appears. The task is completed. You are now a developer!

The instructions are given using the example of a Samsung Galaxy J7 phone.

How to log into Xiaomi and MIUI

Let's consider another option. This time we will enable Developer Mode in Chinese Xiaomi phone based on the add-on operating system MIUI 9. It is the most different from other firmwares. Let's get started.

1. As usual, lower the curtain and click on the gear icon.

1. Select the “About phone” item located at the very bottom.

1. Tap on the item indicated in the screenshot several times.

1. Stop tapping on the MIUI version when a notification appears on the screen indicating the successful completion of the operation.

1. Go to the main settings and click on the item indicated in the screenshot.

1. This is where a new section called “For Developers” will appear.

DevTools looks like this:

After rebooting the phone, there is no need to enter the mode - it will turn on automatically.

Results and comments

We finish here, you should understand: opening the menu for developers on Android is very simple, you just need to tread a little, according to our instructions. If you have any questions, we invite you to leave them in the comments and we ourselves or one of the users will definitely help with practical advice.