Although Android is a free and open source operating system that can be used by any manufacturer of smartphones and touchscreen devices, its development is managed and carried out by the private company Google which, of course, something must earn. For this reason, on every Android smartphone you are practically obliged to keep Google apps, including above all the Play Store, the search store and Google Play Services.
From this last mysterious app that we cannot uninstall from the cellphone comes that Google settings icon, which provides a set of different options compared to the general Android settings menu.
Since these Google settings are hidden in the list of applications, it is very easy to ignore them, even if they contain some important privacy-related options and really useful features to use on every Android device.
The Google Settings app has a gear wheel icon and is present in every Android smartphone where Google Apps are installed.
The settings hidden in this application mainly concern the control of the information that the Android phone or tablet shares with Google itself.
In practice it is a menu to configure the privacy of personal information and the use of the phone in order to choose whether Google must know us and to what extent.
NOTE: In Android 6 Marshmellow this app no longer exists and Google settings are less hidden and accessible from the General Settings of the smartphone.
READ ALSO: Activate the secret settings menu in Android 6 Marshmellow
Before rushing to disable all Google settings immediately, you need to think for a moment what they are for.
If it is true that sharing private data with Google can be annoying, it is also true that in return you receive important and necessary services, which I don't think you want to give up.
The most important setting found in Google Settings is that relating to the location of the mobile phone in case it is lost or stolen and the possibility to block it and erase its memory if it is now irrecoverable.
This is the Android Device Manager menu located under the Security section in the Google settings.
The other option in the Security menu is the App Verification which allows Google to check the applications we have installed on the phone to see if they are clean or harmful.
This can be seen as an invasion of privacy so if you want to give up security control over apps, you can disable them.
Returning to the Google Settings menu, we discover another very interesting section, the one related to Geolocation .
From here the menu opens to activate the GPS or high-precision location or if you want to use the low-power one, only with wifi and data networks.
By scrolling down on this screen, you can touch Location History to turn it off or check it.
We said, in another article, that through this history Google can save the places we go and all our movements when we go around.
here everyone can decide whether to stop this recording or to keep it active.
From the Google settings you can control all the security and privacy options of the Google account I have already talked about, which are independent of the phone and can be better controlled from the computer.
In Google Settings -> Services -> Connected Apps it is possible to control which applications have access to our account credentials and it is possible, from here, to revoke the authorization to use them.
An important set of options are those for configuring Google Now cards, the behavior of the Google search bar that you see on the main screen of the phone and the voice assistant Ok Google .
From here you can also disable Google Now and Ok Google if they are never used.
In Google Settings there are also some options related to other apps, such as photo backups in Google Photos, Google Fit movement data collection and Google Drive data management.
Finally, you can configure the profile of the games in Google Play Games (which no longer requires Google+) and activate the Smart Lock of the passwords, i.e. the automatic access of the apps to the relevant account with, optionally, some exceptions (in this regard, read how Google saves all passwords with automatic login in sites and applications.
In the end this Google settings is really an important menu / app to control and configure, not only to make the phone work better, but above all to control all the information that Google can collect about us.
READ ALSO: Android secret codes to open hidden menus
