How to stop Android apps from consuming mobile network data

The most recent incident involved a glitch in the Google News news app for Android devices that cost many users unjustly by inadvertently consuming huge amounts of mobile data, increasing unusual mobile charges, causing many people to worry that similar problems may occur.

Regardless of whether you are using the Google News app or not, there is a chance that there are other apps on your Android smartphone that are eating up your mobile data even when you are not using it.

First of all, to check your mobile network data usage, you need to go to the Settings of your device, select the section Network & Internet → Data Usage.

Here you can see the exact amount of data consumed in a specific time period.

You then have a few more options to control mobile data usage. Some of the features outlined below are only available in Android OS versions 8.0 or later.

1, Set up alarms and limits

To avoid falling into a “fait” situation, you can set up an alert so that your device sends a notification when you've reached a certain threshold for your phone's data usage.

To set an alert, go to Settings > Network & Internet > Data usage > Mobile data usage > Settings. In the Data warning section, enter the size in megabytes or gigabytes within your allowable limit and then select “Set” to finish.

The data limit setting is also available below the card Mobile data usage > Settings. Accordingly, you turn on the data limit feature (Set data limit), click OK > Data limit, enter the limit in megabytes or gigabytes so that your device automatically stops downloading data when this threshold is reached. Then select “Set” to finish.

2, Restrict background data with some apps

This is an option that helps you limit data usage with certain apps. This also means apps won't work as they should, you won't get push notifications for example, but this will prevent apps from eating up data when you're not using them.

In some cases, you can also restrict mobile data usage inside apps. Go to Settings then go to Network & Internet > Data usage > Mobile data usage.

From here, scroll down until you see the app you want to restrict data from. Click on that application name and turn off the section that allows background data (Background data).

3, Turn off the feature of using mobile data

This can be considered as a last resort if you can connect to the wifi network completely. To do so, go to Settings > Network & Internet > Data usage and select Mobile data.

Finally, if you want complete peace of mind that an application is not consuming data in the background, as in the case of the Google News app, you can choose to delete it if you don't need it. use to

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