7 Tips to Reduce Your Mobile Data Usage and Cost

Many people are always worried about their mobile data consumption; some are constantly going over their subscription limits and paying extra charges for data overage. Add to that some are getting notifications from iCloud or Google Drive that they need to increase their cloud storage plan as it is getting full.

Here are some tips to help you better manage your mobile data consumption and costs:

1- Automatic Downloads and Updates:

On your iPhone Go to Settings / iTunes & Apple Store and turn off automatic downloads for Music, Apps, Books & Audiobooks, Updates, also remember to turn off automatic downloads using cellular data.
On Android devices, this needs to be disabled from the Play Store App under Settings / Auto-update apps. You can select to Auto-update over Wi-Fi only or simply do not Auto-update.

2- Automatic Backups:

I always backup my mobile devices using my laptop and not via the cloud. It saves me time and data, and it is more practical if you are living somewhere with bad, limited, or slow internet and if you have several devices to backup.
On your iPhone go to iCloud settings and disable Photos automatic upload to include (iCloud Photo Library, My Photo Stream, iCloud Photo Sharing) also don’t forget to disable iCloud Backup. What I do, is make sure to download all my photos from my phones to my laptop on a weekly basis and then regularly backup my phone using iTunes.

3- WhatsApp Chat Backup:

WhatsApp is filled on a daily basis with dozens of useless photos of videos. On install or any major update, WhatsApp asks you to choose if you want to backup your chats on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Most people choose daily without giving it much thought, and this means that WhatsApp is constantly uploading your content and consuming your cloud storage.
What I do is make sure to delete unwanted photos and videos and backup once a week manually. If you have important conversations, you can choose export to your laptop in order not to lose them.

4- Offline Google Maps:

If you use Google maps regularly, then go Google Maps App / Offline Areas and select your area of interest to download the offline map. It will save you a lot of mobile data usage. The offline data usually expires in 30 days so make sure to always update over Wi-Fi only.

5- Autoplay Facebook Movies:

We are now consuming a lot more videos on social media in general and Facebook in particular. Facebook is set to autoplay videos as you scroll over the story, but you can choose to disable autoplay or simply limit it to Wi-Fi connections only. You can also decide not to upload photos and videos in HD mode to save on upload data consumption as well.

6- Wi-Fi Assist:

Turn off the Wi-Fi assist feature from your iPhone. If this is turned on it automatically uses cellular data when Wi-Fi connectivity is poor.

7- Mobile Data Saver and Limits:

You can turn on the Data Saver feature on Android to keep most background app data activated only on Wi-Fi. Also, you can set a data limit for your phone so that it automatically stops using mobile data when it reaches the threshold.

Let me know if you have additional tips, will add them to the post.