These are the 8 most important tips and tricks for your Motorola phone

Motorola’s software layer has been characterized for years by its limited impact on the appearance and operation of Android. Although you certainly don’t get the most customization options in Motorola’s UI, the shell does offer all the basic functions you need. In this article you will find the 8 most important tips and tricks to take the experience on your Motorola phone to the next level.

Motorola’s Moto UI software layer

Buying a phone without a heavy Android software layer is now starting to be a tough job. OnePlus was previously one of the best-known manufacturers of phones with software that basically resembled ‘stock Android’. However, with the arrival of OxygenOS 11, the brand moved away from that previous design philosophy to follow other Chinese brands – such as parent company OPPO. Fortunately, there are three other brands that invariably offer stock Android on their ‘new’ phones: Google, Motorola and Nokia.

Both Nokia and Google deliver a very basic variant of Android, with only the minimal extras – the only way for the Android purists to really enjoy stock Android. If, like me, you can’t live without some exclusive customization options, or just some features to enjoy Android, Motorola’s UI is the perfect solution.

Motorola’s Moto UI is almost similar in appearance to stock Android, while its feature set is a generous middle ground between stock Android and Xiaomi’s MIUI or Samsung’s One UI. There are not a lot of customization options and yet that actually feels fine in Moto UI.

If you have just bought a Motorola phone and are wondering which settings you should or can adjust, then you have come to the right place. Below you can read the most important Moto UI tips, along with a ‘step-by-step plan’ to implement them on your Motorola phone. For questions about the tips, or additions to the offer we have put together, you are welcome in the comments below this article.

1. Focus on your game with Gametime

Gaming, reading notifications or receiving a phone call do not go together. In more and more software shells you see options to avoid such disturbing items when gaming. Years ago, OnePlus even introduced a Fnactic mode from eSports team Fnactic. Motorola offers a similar mode. In the Moto app you will find a Gametime mode.

As the name of the mode suggests, it offers settings that are useful when gaming. One of the options is to ignore incoming notifications. You can also block gesture actions, such as the 3-finger swipe action for screenshots. If you want to take a closer look at all the settings, be sure to follow the steps below.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Play, followed by Gametime
4. Flip the switch if it still says Off at the top
5. Once Gametime is enabled, click Settings at the bottom

You will now immediately see the Gametime settings. Of course you can always turn this off, by flipping the switch again so that it is no longer ‘On’, but ‘Off’.

2. Gesture-heaven, these are the possibilities

When you think of Motorola, you think of? If you owned a Moto device in the past, you may be saying “Gestures” now. The company brought the “three-finger screenshot” to Android years ago. Furthermore, Motorola was known for the gesture for activating the camera by turning your wrist twice quickly. A last well-known gesture from Motorola is the function to quickly switch on your flashlight by shaking the phone up and down twice. There are many more gestures to discover through the steps below.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Gestures
4. Select the individual switches of the gestures to turn them on or off

3. Enable button or gesture navigation

Since the introduction of Google’s gesture navigation in Android 10, Motorola has been completely turned around. If you’ve just bought a phone, there’s a good chance the setup will include an “explanation” section about Google’s gesture navigation and the swipe navigation will be enabled for you automatically. For existing Moto owners with a phone running Android 10 or Android 11, it may not be. Those will have to manually enable gesture navigation. Conversely, it may be undesirable for a new Motorola owner to enable gesture navigation. Everyone has their own personal preference in that regard. If you want to switch between the two navigation methods, you want to take the actions below.

1. Open the Android settings menu
2. Swipe down until you see System, click on that
3. Then choose Gestures, followed by System Navigation
4. Select Gesture Navigation or Three Button Navigation based on personal preference

If you choose the Gesture navigation, you can also click on a gear to set the sensitivity. By default, this is almost at the highest position. If you notice that because of this you sometimes go to the previous tab too quickly, you can gradually reduce the sensitivity.

This means that a navigation action is less likely to happen by accident. However, a navigation action sometimes takes a little more effort to perform. For example, if you swipe in too little from the edges of the screen, the action could be seen by Android as an action that falls within the “margin of error” and will therefore not be performed.

4. Personalize your Motorola phone

Are you going crazy with the default colors of the Moto UI interface, or do you think the interface could be brightened up with other app icons? Like any Android phone, Motorola offers you the necessary settings to customize the interface to your liking. Motorola’s Android interface even lets you create a separate system theme. In that system theme you can choose a font to use, as well as the system colors, the shape of the app icons and the layout of the home screen. By adjusting the layout, you determine how many app icons are displayed in the width and length of the home screen. We explain below how to create such a system theme.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Personalize
4. Select Styles to navigate to the theme settings
5. Click on the big box with the + icon at the bottom
6. Follow all steps and click on Next at the bottom and on Done at the end

You will also be asked for a name for the theme to be created. That way you can distinguish the theme from the other system themes. You can always adjust created themes at a later time by clicking on the pen icon.

5. ‘Keep the screen on when you’re looking at it’

If you don’t touch the screen of your phone for a while, it switches off automatically to save your battery. However, if you’re quietly reading a news article or book on your phone, there’s a good chance that the screen won’t be touched for so long that the ‘shutdown timer’ runs out before you’ve read everything. Samsung introduced an eye-tracking function on its Samsung Galaxy S4. If you looked at the screen while the feature was turned on, the screen stayed on. Motorola has built a similar feature into Moto UI. Do you also want your screen to remain on when reading a longer text or if you have to check something, then definitely follow the steps below.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Display
4. Turn on the switch behind Responsive display

Motorola uses your phone’s camera for this function. If you prefer not to have the operating system ‘watch’ you via the camera to keep your screen on, switch this function off again by flipping the switch again in step 4.

6. Screen on with notifications? This is how you change the settings.

Motorola turns the screen on by default when you move the device or when notifications arrive on your phone. This can be useful for keeping up to date with emails or chat messages, and it replaces the LED lights you’ve found on phones in the past. If you really need to focus on a task for a while, it can be really annoying. If you receive a few dozen notifications every hour, it may soon start to get on your nerves. Would you rather lose the function than rich, return to the rest position with the explanation below.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Display
4. Turn off the switch behind Interactive display

7. This is how you can turn on automatic do not disturb

If we do stay in the corner of notifications, let’s immediately make sure that you can easily turn on Android’s do not disturb mode during a (work) day. While it’s not that much work to press a button to turn on do not disturb, it can be useful to be able to turn on do not disturb even faster if you are in a meeting, for example. You would rather not touch your phone to be immersed in notifications. Motorola makes that easy by turning on do not disturb when you flip your phone. In Do Not Disturb, every regular notification is blocked, including phone calls. Alarm clocks keep going off.

1. Open the Moto app from your app list
2. Click on the hamburger menu at the top left
3. Then choose Gestures
4. Turn on the switch at the back Flip to do not disturb

If you then place the phone with the screen facing a dark surface – for example your desk – the mode switches on immediately. If you turn the phone over again, the do not disturb mode will be switched off and you will receive all notifications again.

8. Automatically turn on night lights

A function that is present on almost every Android phone these days is the built-in night light. With this night lighting you can adjust the color reproduction of your screen, so that the screen shows less blue light. The screen often becomes a bit yellowish/orange for this. Many people do this to get less trouble for their eyes in the evenings, because orange light is less sharp for the eyes in a dark environment. If you also want to be less bothered by your eyes on your Motorola phone, follow the steps below immediately and give your eyes some rest.

1. Open your phone’s settings menu
2. Navigate to the View section
3. In that section, click on the Night Lights setting
4. Select Enable now to turn the screen orange

At the top you will also find an option to schedule the Night Lights. You can also choose to switch on the lighting between sunset and sunrise, or during specific times. For example, if you go to sleep at 21:00, switch on the night lamp at 20:00 so that you can continue to use your phone before going to sleep without bothering your eyes.

Do you have any tips on setting up Motorola phones? Let us know in the comments below this article.