If your phone is currently running Android 9.0 Pie, then you’ll probably have some experience with the Google Digital Wellbeing feature. But over the weekend, a number of Google Pixel phone owners have found that the feature may actually have been slowing their phones down.
The Verge reports that a number of Pixel owners are sharing their experiences on Reddit. Some of them are reporting “night and day” differences between having the feature on and off. Others are either not convinced that the difference is as obvious, or noticed any difference at all. The affected devices range from the Pixel 3 variants all the way to the original Pixel from 2016.
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To quickly recap, Digital Wellbeing was introduced as part of Android 9 Pie. What it does is track the amount of time users spend on their devices, and allow users to control the amount of time they spend doing so. For example, you can set timers for specific apps that you don’t want to spend too much time on. But one thing that the Digital Wellbeing feature isn’t supposed to do is actually slowing devices down.
All that said, Digital Wellbeing is still not a feature that’s available in all Android devices running Pie. If your phone does have it, though, you could try turning it off and see if it makes for a significant improvement in performance.
