How to make the most of your mobile internet data

Most of us have all been there before; you’re happily browsing away when you suddenly get the dreaded text to say you’re at your data limit.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tricks you can utilise to make the most of your mobile internet data, without having to worry about going over your limit. Here are our top tips for getting the most from your mobile internet data.

Connect to Wi-Fi

The best defence against guzzling your mobile data is connecting to local Wi-Fi hotspots. Nowadays, pubs, coffee shops, bars and other public locations are likely to offer free Wi-Fi to their customers, so make sure you get the Wi-Fi password when you are out and about. The next time you visit this place, your mobile will connect automatically, so you won’t have to worry about doing this every time.

Turn off Push Notifications

Cut down on how many apps you allow to send you push notifications to spare your mobile data. You can easily stop apps interrupting you unimportant messages by simply going to your Settings and turning off non-essential notifications from apps that are pestering you.

Bear in mind, you shouldn’t turn off notifications from apps you use all the time as this won’t do anything to help save your mobile data.

Watch what you watch on your mobile

The likes of YouTube and iPlayer might be perfect platforms for watching your favourite videos and TV shows, but they can really eat into your data if you are watching with 3G or 4G. You can stop this from happening by going into your Settings and selecting to only playback over Wi-Fi. This will help to limit how much internet data you need to use. Of course, you can just wait until you get home to watch these videos where you are connected to the Wi-Fi.

Switch off autoplay on social media

A new feature from Facebook’s iOS app means that any videos that appear on your feed as you scroll down start to play automatically. It doesn’t matter whether or not you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Twitter also has this feature. Your social media settings can stop this from happening, so make sure you stop the autoplay function.

Kill the background app refresh iOS 7 introduced the new feature that gives your phone the ability to automatically update apps in the background, without you having to lift a finger. This feature has continued in subsequent models.

However, if you aren’t connected to Wi-Fi, this can eat into your data, so make sure this app is switched off and only accept updates when you are connected to Wi-Fi.