Google’s Digital Wellbeing feature might be causing the slowdown in Pixel phones

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The intention behind Google’s Digital Wellbeing feature was to get people off their phones more and curb potential smartphone addiction. It lets you track how much time you spend on your phone and what apps you use frequently. But it seems an unwanted side effect is it seems to be slowing down Pixel phones. One Pixel 3 user posted on Reddit that when they turned off Digital Wellbeing, the difference was like “night and day.” The user went as far to recommend to other Pixel 3 users to turn the feature off even if you don’t have any performance issues. 

Now, if you want to see if Digital Wellbeing affects your Pixel device, you can turn off the feature by heading into the Settings of your Pixel phone. Choose Digital Wellbeing and then tap on the three-dot icon at the top right corner and select “Turn off usage access.” You can confirm this decision on the next “Usage access” screen. Choose Digital Wellbeing and toggle the “permit usage access” option to off. Google hasn’t responded yet to this The Verge report. 

Digital Wellbeing features spotted by some Google Home users

Looks like Google is taking its Digital Wellbeing features beyond Android 9 Pie and bringing it to its Google Home platform. Reddit user /u/alexanderbumpertramp spotted a new Digital Wellbeing option in the Google Home app. This feature is meant to help people curb smartphone addiction by showing how much time they’ve spent on their phones and do things like set app timers, help wind down usage at night, to name a few. There are currently two features available in the app: filters and downtime. Filter lets you add an age restriction and prevents non-registered users from playing media. Meanwhile, downtime blocks all voice commands during a specific time. This seems to be a staged rollout, though, so you might not see it for your Google Home device of choice just yet. We can’t say either if it’s coming to all Google Home users as sometimes these features get regional restrictions but we’re keeping our eyes peeled for any updates.

Source: XDA Developers