Toggle off two features to cool down your Pixel 6 and improve the battery life
Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro owners recently were suffering from a problem as their devices were running so hot and the batteries were draining so fast that some ran out of fuel by the middle of the day. Google's September update supposedly fixed the problem, but not for those on Verizon who did not get the update sent until late last week. From this writer's personal experience, those files have yet to be received.
Here's a simple way to improve the battery life and turn down the heat on your Pixel 6 series phone
If you have not yet received the September update for your Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, or if the update hasn't stopped your battery from draining, a Redditor with the handle of Human_Individual_815 came up with a suggestion that initially was so ridiculed by other Pixel 6 series users, he took it down. But after word got back to him from others that this quick and simple workaround was improving the battery life on the phones while cooling down the handsets, he put the post back up, and judging from the responses, it will be up to stay.
Disabling Usage access on two apps could improve the battery life and reduce the heat on your Pixel 6
So if you want to try to improve the battery life on your Pixel 6 series phone and take the temperature down a notch, toggle off Usage access to Digital Wellbeing and Device Health Services. To do this, go to Settings and using the search bar at the top of the display, search for Usage access. Tap on Usage access and you'll see a list of apps. Tap on Device Health Services and toggle off "Permit usage access." Do the same thing with the Digital Wellbeing listing. Reboot and restart.
Doing this will eliminate some features. The Redditor who devised this plan said that his battery life doubled by shutting down the two aforementioned apps. He also noted that "It will affect adaptive battery and charging. It will affect adaptive connection. It will affect any of your bedtime mode stuff. It will affect anything like Fitbits or fitness watches and all that type of stuff and I'm sure there's quite a bit more. It really is unfortunate that we have to turn these features off in order to be able to use our phone."
The results have been impressive. A Reddit member with the name cloudacoustic93 writes, "Holy moly this worked. Just been a few hours but there is noticeable difference already." Another member, Rk3h, reported that the Accubattery app showed an immediate improvement in battery life after a restart and a charge. Others were having positive results. "Tried and it is working for me, battery last more," said one Pixel 6 series user. "Perfect, thank you," said another.
Unless you're married to some of the features you'll be disabling, there is no reason not to try this out on your Pixel 6
We can continue to give you more results from those who have tried this. Among the better responses was this one from a user named novelomaly who wrote, "Thank you!!! This worked for me and I'm back to normal up time where my phone didn't go dead if I forget to plug it in at night!"
Another post throws in some data that we can chew on: "Update: Currently at 40% with 5h 23m SOT! Looks like this worked out just fine! It would be at 10% by now already. Most importantly, my phone hasn't heated up at all, so that's a huge plus. Thanks for the tip! I hope it stays this way till Google fixes up at their end."
So what about yours truly? Well, personally I am a power user and there might have been some improvement in battery life. I will say that for sure, my Pixel 6 Pro is not running as hot as it was before toggling off Usage access to Digital Wellbeing and Device Health Services. Frankly, I'm waiting to see whether the September update makes a big difference, and thus far, my phone has yet to receive the update.
If you have the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro and you can fry an egg on the device and the battery isn't getting you through lunchtime, why not give this a shot? It isn't anything that you can't quickly reverse and the features impacted by this might not matter to you at all. Let us know whether you notice an improvement in your Pixel 6 series phone's battery life by dropping a comment in the box below!
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