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On the surface, Android and privacy might not seem like the most natural of bedfellows. Google is known for its advertising business, after all — it’s how the company makes the lion’s share of its money — and it can be tough to square the notion of data collection with the concept of carefully controlled information.

In actuality, though, Google gives you a good amount of authority over how and when it taps into your Android-associated info. (And even at its worst, the company never shares your data with anyone or sells it to third parties, despite some broad misconceptions to the contrary.) Ultimately, it just comes down to a matter of educating yourself about the possibilities and then determining what balance of privacy and function makes the most sense for you.

And you’d better believe the onus falls squarely on you to do that. By default, most Google privacy valves are opened up to the max — to the setting that allows the most feature-rich and ad-supporting experience and that uses your data in the most free-flowing manner possible. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it may or may not be what you want, particularly from a professional perspective. And navigating the layers of settings, not only with Google itself but also with the various third-party services that interact with your phone, is often easier said than done.

Well, consider this your guide to the labyrinth. I’ll take you through a series of 18 Android privacy adjustments, starting with the easiest and most broadly advisable tweaks and ending with higher-level tactics for the most privacy-minded users. Along the way I’ll explain what each setting accomplishes, how long it should take to implement, and how much inconvenience it’ll cause.

Make your way through the list and think thoroughly about each item’s pros and cons — and before you know it, you’ll have a deliberate Android privacy plan that’s less about defaults and more about your own preferences.

Section I: Easy Android privacy adjustments that are advisable for anyone 1. Uninstall unused apps

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 0/10

This first Android privacy step is a no-brainer and something everyone should do periodically: Look through all of the installed apps on your phone and remove anything you haven’t used in the past month or two (so long as it isn’t required by your IT department, of course!). Unused apps not only take a toll on your device’s resources; they also have the potential to leave open doors to sensitive info that’d be better off closed.

So open up your app drawer and mull over every icon you see there. If you haven’t used an app in a while, press and hold its icon and select “Uninstall” — or, if you don’t see that as an option, select “App info” and then find the Uninstall button. On certain Android versions, you might have to drag the app toward the top of the screen to access those same options; once you see them appear at the top of your display, drag the app up to that area and then release it.

With apps that came preinstalled on your phone out of the box, you may not always be able to uninstall but can often disable them — with the option to do so appearing either in that same long-press menu or within the aforementioned “App info” screen. That won’t get the app off your device entirely but will stop it from running and actively accessing any of your information.

2. Check on apps with access to your Google account

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 0/10

In addition to the phone-specific permissions, apps and services can request access to certain types of data within your Google account — things like your contacts, your Gmail messages, or even your Google Drive storage. Again, such access may be completely warranted and no cause for concern (and it’d be present only if you explicitly authorized it at some point), but once you’re no longer actively using the associated app, you don’t want to leave that pathway open.

Luckily, it’s an especially easy one to close — and another painless privacy step worth performing periodically. Just open up the Google account connections page and look over everything in the list. For any items you no longer use or don’t recognize, click their title and then click the “Delete all connections” option on the screen that comes up next.

Clamping down on third-party app access to your Google account is a simple way to secure forgotten pathways and strengthen your privacy.

JR Raphael / IDG

Click “Confirm” on the confirmation box that pops up after, then rest easy knowing that teensy crack into your data is closed up and patched over.

3. Revisit your Android app permissions

• Time required: 5 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 0/10

Now that we’ve taken care of apps you’re no longer using, let’s think about the ones you are still actively engaging with — because even those may have permissions you once granted but no longer require.

So open up the Security & Privacy section of your system settings and tap “Permission Manager.” Depending on your specific software and device, you might have to first tap a line that says “Privacy” or “Privacy controls” before you see it. (If you don’t see anything like that, try searching your system settings for the word permission to find the closest equivalent.)

Then, one by one, tap on each permission type in the list, look over the apps that have access to it, and consider whether each app’s access still strikes you as being necessary.

If you see something that seems questionable, tap the name of the app and then change its setting to “Deny.” There’s a chance the app will stop being able to perform one of its functions as a result, but at worst, it’ll prompt you to re-enable the permission at some future moment and you can then reconsider it.

And provided you’re using 2019’s Android 10 version or higher — and if you aren’t, you’ve got far bigger privacy problems to ponder! — pay extra attention to the “Location” section of permissions. As of that release, you can get more nuanced with that setting and allow an app to access to your location all the time or only when the app is actively in use, which gives you a lot more flexibility than the traditional all-or-nothing approach.

With 2020’s Android 11 version and higher, you can also grant apps access to your location, camera, and microphone only on a limited, single-session basis — meaning the permissions will expire and have to be requested anew each time, whenever you exit the app and move on to something else.

And with 2021’s Android 12 software and up, you can specify whether you want an app to have access to your precise location or only your approximate location, too.

Android lets you get incredibly granular about what data different apps can access, but it’s up to you to check up on it and make any necessary changes.

JR Raphael / IDG

For even more insight, look for the “Privacy dashboard” option within that same section of your system settings (or “Permissions used in last 24 hours,” for the closest equivalent in Samsung’s heavily modified version of the operating system). That’ll let you see exactly which apps have accessed different permission-requiring areas over the past 24 hours in a visual timeline view.

4. Put invisible app tracking on notice

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 1/10

Aside from their actual system-level permissions, apps on Android are able to track your activity in a variety of ways and then share that data elsewhere — provided they have access to the internet (which itself is a system-level permission).

Often, this is nothing nefarious. Lots of apps rely on these sorts of mechanisms to monitor performance and spot possible bugs, while others use technology considered “trackers” as part of the advertising that allows them to be monetized and continue offering you ongoing services for little to no ongoing expense.

Even so, you can take control of this type of tracking and make yourself aware of what, exactly, apps are doing in the background — and put a stop to it, if you want.

The key to making this happen comes in the unlikely-seeming spot of an Android web browser called DuckDuckGo. But you don’t need to do anything related to the actual browser function of the app to tap into it (though you certainly can, if you’d like!).

Instead, install the app, then open it up, make your way through its welcome screens, and once you see the main web browsing interface, tap the three-dot menu icon in the upper-right corner. Select “Settings,” then “App Tracking Protection.”

Flip the toggle at the top of the next screen into the on position, confirm that you want to activate the feature, and then keep an eye on your notifications.

There, DuckDuckGo will show you exactly what trackers it’s finding and blocking in apps on your device. You can also always see that same info by going back to that same settings screen within the browser.

DuckDuckGo’s App Tracking Protection feature gives you rare insight into — and control over — the typically-invisible ways apps track your activity.

JR Raphael / IDG

Now for the asterisk here: Since most of this activity isn’t actually anything to worry about, it’s possible that seeing this data will (a) cause you unnecessary stress and waste your time and (b) potentially cause some functions within apps to stop working properly — since DuckDuckGo is blocking mechanisms that may be crucial to an app’s operation.

But that same area of the browser’s settings make it easy to enable or disable the blocking on an app-by-app basis, so you can fine-tune and adjust things as you see fit.

Whether you ultimately decide to peek at the info for a while and then disable the feature or keep it running and blocking indefinitely, it’s a valuable bit of knowledge — and, optionally, power — to have.

5. Clamp down on your lock screen privacy

• Time required: 1 minute
• Inconvenience level: 1/10

By default, Android is typically set to show all of your notification content on your lock screen — and that means if someone else picks up your phone, they might see sensitive info without even having to put in a PIN, pattern, or passcode.

Change that by opening up the Display section of your phone’s settings, selecting “Lock screen,” then selecting “Privacy” and switching the setting to either “Show sensitive content only when unlocked” or “Don’t show notifications at all,” depending on your comfort level. (On a Samsung phone, you’ll instead open the Notifications section of the system settings and then tap “Lock screen notifications” to find a similar set of options.)

6. Opt out of Samsung’s data-sharing systems and consider avoiding its apps

• Time required: 5 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 1/10

If you have a Samsung phone, listen up: The company is quite possibly selling your data — not just using it internally and privately but outright selling it to third parties (and without being even remotely up-front about what’s going on).

As I’ve reported before, Samsung’s Galaxy phones have a disconcertingly intricate system for collecting different types of data from people who use its devices and then generating extra revenue by selling that data to other companies. And clearly, that’s not what you want to have happening.

So at the very least, opt of this obnoxiousness everywhere you can — most importantly by searching your system settings for customization service and then making sure the associated option is off everywhere it appears, including within the settings for the Samsung Calendar app, Samsung Clock app, Samsung Gallery app, and Samsung My Files app as well as within the “General management” settings and the settings for your Samsung account.

And if you really want to be proactive about your privacy, just ditch Samsung’s default apps altogether. You’ll get better all-around experiences by turning to other Android apps for those same purposes, anyhow, and you’ll have an easier time syncing or moving your data to non-Samsung devices now and in the future, too. And, y’know, you won’t be subjecting yourself to sneaky selling of your personal and/or company information with no discernible benefit to you.

Section II: Moderately advanced Android privacy modifications some people may want to perform 7. Turn off Google’s ad personalization system

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 2/10

Google makes its money by showing ads around the internet — that’s no secret. And it uses data about you to select ads that are, in theory, catered to your interests and more likely to be relevant to you. It never shares your data with advertisers, as mentioned at the top of this story, and all of the matching happens within Google and in a completely automated, machine-driven sense.

At the end of the day, you’re bound to see some of those ads no matter what you do — so there’s an argument that having the ads be catered to your interests at least creates the potential for them to be appealing as opposed to just random. But if you’d rather not have your data used for that purpose, you can turn the personalization system off.

Just head into the Google section of your system settings, tap your name and account name at the top, then tap “Manage your Google Account.”

Next, tap the Data & Privacy tab, scroll down to the “Personalized ads” section, and tap “My Ad Center” — then turn off the toggle at the top of the screen that comes up and confirm you want to make the change.

Google lets you opt out of its ad personalization system entirely, if you’re so inclined.

JR Raphael / IDG

If you’d rather take a more measured approach, you can also tap on any individual parts of your Google profile on that same screen to disable ad personalization based only on those specific variables — for instance, your gender, age, and marital status.

And one more thing to check: Make your way back to the Google settings menu where we started and tap your name and account name there one more time. If you see any additional Google accounts show up as options, be sure to tap them and follow the same steps we just went over for each subsequent account. Every Google account has its own separate settings, so you’ll have to make sure your ad personalization preferences are adjusted everywhere for them to become truly universal.

8. Reset or erase your Android advertising ID

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 2/10

As an alternate path to the full ad personalization opt-out, you can also now reset or erase something known as your “advertising ID” on Android.

That ID is a unique string of numbers specific to your phone that apps can use to identify you. They may not know your name or anything personal about you — unless you choose to share such info — but that advertising ID lets them learn about your interests and behaviors, even so, and then use that data to show you ads that are allegedly more likely to be up your alley.

When you reset or delete that ID, all of that data is lost — and apps have no way to connect your behavior to any consistent identifier associated with you. Again, just like with our last item, that doesn’t mean you won’t see ads within apps or around the web anymore. It just means those ads won’t be programmatically selected based on your ongoing activities and what those suggest about your interests.

Here, too, there’s some nuance available: If you reset the advertising ID, you’ll basically give yourself a fresh start and eliminate any data that’s been associated with your activity up until that moment. If you delete the ID, you’ll make it impossible for apps to identify you entirely (again, unless you choose to provide them with identifying info).

Either way, you can find the option by looking in the Security & Privacy section of your system settings, then tapping either “Privacy Controls” or “More Privacy Settings” followed by “Ads.” You’ll find both possible paths in that area, along with options to see and customize exactly which subject areas apps currently have associated with your ID, to see and customize if and how apps are able to use that data to control ads in other environments, and to opt in or out of allowing advertisers to request info that’d help them measure their ad performance over time.

Android’s advertising ID options are an untapped gold mine of privacy choices.

JR Raphael / IDG

9. Start using a VPN

• Time required: 5 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 2/10

If you’re using a company-connected phone, there’s a decent chance your employer is already providing you with a corporate VPN (virtual private network). But if not, it may be worth your while to set one up on your own.

A VPN, in short, keeps all the data you send and receive on your phone encrypted, private, and secure. Without it, someone could snoop on your connection and intercept sensitive info without your knowledge. (It’s an especially common concern when public Wi-Fi networks are involved.)

With widespread improvements to web security over the past several years, there’s now some debate as to whether a VPN is actually needed in most professional scenarios — especially outside of countries where authoritarian control over internet access is an issue.

Still, as long as you’re using a trustworthy and reputable provider, there’s certainly no harm in having that extra layer of protection in place. And if you’re working with sensitive company data in particular, there may be some significant benefits.

So where to begin? If you’re using a Google Pixel phone, you’ve got a VPN built right into your device and ready to roll without any expense. Just look for the “VPN” option within the Network & Internet section of your system settings, then tap the “VPN By Google” line to get it set up.

If you’re using a non-Pixel phone with the Google Fi wireless service, you also have access to a similar sort of built-in always-on VPN option. Like the Pixel VPN path, it’s free, secure, and as simple as can be to use. You can activate and manage it by tapping your name and then selecting “Privacy & security” within the Google Fi Android app. Look for the line labeled “Protect your online activity” to get started.

If you’re using any other phone and carrier, you’ll need to turn to a third-party provider to get that same sort of functionality. In its latest rankings, our sister publication, PCWorld, recommends ExpressVPN and NordVPN as its top two choices. Both have been consistently well-reviewed for years now.

Both are also minimal hassle once set up on your phone and shouldn’t change much about the way you work, but they do require an ongoing payment — roughly 13 bucks a month for either, with discounts available if you pay for a year or more up front — hence the inconvenience level score. But they’re absolutely more advisable to use than most free or dirt-cheap VPN options you’ll encounter, as those frequently mishandle data and stick you with unreasonably low usage limits in order to make up for their low costs.

10. Add extra encryption onto especially sensitive files

• Time required: 3 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 3/10

Give sensitive files on your phone an extra layer of encryption with Solid Explorer, which costs $3 after a two-week trial. The app lets you encrypt any file so it can be accessed only after your personal password or biometric authentication has been applied. That does mean you’ll have to unlock the file every time you want to view or share it, which can be mildly annoying — but depending on what type of material you have on your device, it might be worth it for the added peace of mind.

Solid Explorer lets you add an extra layer of encryption onto especially sensitive files.

JR Raphael / IDG

11. Find your Private and/or Safe Space

• Time required: 3 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 3/10

As of 2024’s Android 15 release, Android offers a native way to separate out sensitive apps and add in an extra layer of authentication to protect the information within them. The system also optionally allows you to hide those apps entirely and make ’em visible only after said authentication.

If your device is running Android 15 or higher, you can get started by searching your phone’s settings for Private Space and then selecting the “Private Space” option that shows up in the results.

Samsung devices also offer a similar feature called Secure Folder that’s available even on earlier Android builds. Search the system settings of any Galaxy gizmo for Secure Folder to find that.

And, no matter what type of Android device you’re carrying, you can find similar systems for keeping both files and photos out of sight and password-protected within the Google Files and Google Photos Android apps, respectively. Those systems don’t involve encryption, like our last measure, but they do make it far more unlikely for sensitive files and photos to be found in the first place — should anyone else ever have their hands on your device.

You can find ’em by looking for the “Safe Folder” tile on the Files app’s main screen and the “Locked” option at the bottom of the Photos app’s Collections tab.

12. Rethink your browser setup

• Time required: 4 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 4/10

Google’s Chrome Android browser has all sorts of impressive features, but many of them inherently require some manner of privacy tradeoff in order to work. For instance, you can easily find any page you visited on any device with a super-fast search — but in order for that to happen, Google has to maintain a cross-device record of every site you visit.

Only you can decide whether the conveniences outweigh the privacy tradeoffs, but if you want to make your Android web browsing as private as possible, Mozilla’s Firefox Focus app is hands-down the simplest, most minimal-effort way to make it happen.

Firefox Focus is designed at its core to provide an ephemeral, single-session-only sort of Android browsing experience: No history, cookies, or passwords are ever saved, and the app automatically blocks trackers and ads across the web. When you’re done with a page, you tap a trash can icon in the corner of the screen, and poof: It’s gone for good.

The app also offers a host of “enhanced tracking protection” features that make it incredibly easy to block scripts, cookies, and other forms of tracking, too. You can also configure it to require authentication every time you open it or switch to it from another app, in case you have a browsing session active and want to be sure no one else who holds your phone could possibly find it.

The downside, of course, is that there’s no syncing whatsoever — no ability to access or revisit your browsing history and also no way to find recently opened tabs from within the same browser on another device. Beyond that, aggressive blocking of cookies and other script-oriented elements on the web can often break websites and cause key functions to fail, without any obvious outward indication to you of what’s happening or why. (Believe me, I troubleshoot this stuff with people all the time!)

So if you’d rather stick with Chrome, there are things you can do to crank up its privacy protection and create a happy-medium of sorts for yourself. Start in the Sync section of the app’s settings, where you can scale down or even completely disable how different forms of your browsing data are shared with Google. Just remember that the more you disable, the more sacrifices you’ll make in terms of convenience — particularly when moving from your phone to your computer and maintaining a common collection of settings and history.

Firefox Focus and Chrome both offer a fair amount of privacy-related options, depending on which path you prefer.

JR Raphael / IDG

Other places to look include:

• The app’s Google Services section, where you can stop Chrome from sending your browsing data back to Google for different reasons
• The Search Engine section, where you can select any default search service you want
• The Payment Methods section, where you can tell Chrome not to save or store any of your payment info
• The Addresses and More section, where you can turn off Chrome’s on-by-default habit of saving your address and other such details and then offering to fill that in for you in the future
• The Privacy and Security section, where you can control what info sites are allowed to see about you when serving you ads as well as prevent sites from detecting if you have payment info saved, opt out of having Chrome preload pages for faster browsing, and activate an option to lock any incognito tabs every time you exit the app
• And the Site Settings section, where you can prevent all sites from accessing your location, camera, and microphone as well as control if and how cookies are allowed

13. Disable Android’s location history feature

• Time required: 3 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 4/10

By default, Google keeps track of everywhere you go with your Android phone in tow. That allows the software to proactively give you traffic and commute alerts for places you commonly visit and lets your phone make more intelligent suggestions based on your behavior — but it also, of course, gives Google quite the docket of data on your day-to-day whereabouts. (Again, the company doesn’t actually share that info with anyone but does use it to determine what ads are shown to you in certain places.)

If you want to turn off the system-level location tracking, open the Google section of your system settings, tap your name and account name at the top of the screen, then tap the Manage Your Google Account button. Next, tap the Data & Privacy tab and select “Location History” within the “History settings” section. (Note, too, that Google is in the midst of renaming this feature to “Timeline,” so the branding around it may change at some point before long.)

Tap the “Turn off” button on the screen that appears next and select either to turn the system off or turn it off and delete any activity that’s already been stored at the same time — and, either way you go, that’s it: Your phone won’t keep track of your treks anymore.

With a couple quick taps, you can stop Google from keeping track of your location — and optionally also eliminate all the existing data it’s stored.

JR Raphael / IDG

For a more nuanced option, look instead at the “Auto-delete” section directly beneath that button within the same Google account settings screen. There, you can instruct your phone to automatically delete all location data on a rolling three-month, 18-month, or 36-month basis — for a middle-ground possibility that’ll give you some of the standard location-oriented advantages without having quite as much data at play.

Here, too, by the way, settings are controlled on an account-by-account basis, so you’ll want to repeat this process as many times as needed for however many Google accounts you have associated with your device.

Section III: High-level Android privacy enhancements that won’t be for everyone 14. Ditch Gmail or Outlook for a more privacy-conscious email setup

• Time required: 4 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 6/10

If you’re really serious about privacy, ProtonMail is the inbox you want to use. ProtonMail applies end-to-end encryption to every message you send, which makes sure no one other than its intended recipient can ever set eyes on it. It’s a whole other level of protection from what you get with Gmail’s encryption or the encryption provided by most third-party mail servers.

The downside is that you have to either use a special ProtonMail.com address with the service or set up your own domain to work with ProtonMail’s servers — and anytime you’re emailing someone who isn’t a fellow ProtonMail user, you’ll have to encrypt your message with a password and a hint that they’ll then need in order to open it. That isn’t exactly easy, and it requires you to forfeit a fair amount of Gmail’s flexibility and power, but it does give you an awful lot of added privacy in return.

ProtonMail is free at its most basic level, which includes one address and 1GB of storage. If you need more storage or want any extra features — such as unlimited folders and labels and support for custom domains — you’ll have to subscribe to a paid plan, which starts at $48 a year for individuals or $84 per user per year for teams.

15. Encrypt your calls and messages

• Time required: 4 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 6/10

For full encryption on the calling and messaging front, Signal is the service you want. It adds end-to-end encryption only when you’re communicating with other Signal users, however — which severely limits its usefulness — and it doesn’t allow you to send and receive text messages from your computer, as most regular messaging apps now do.

Signal is free to use.

16. Consider other privacy-minded app alternatives

• Time required: 4 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 6/10

If you’re really concerned about maximizing your privacy, you don’t have to stop with swapping out your email, calling, and messaging tools. There’s a whole host of standard Android app alternatives — and also supplements — that offer extra privacy assurances at varying convenience-oriented costs.

Take a peek at my separate list of exceptional Android privacy and security apps for a bunch of possibilities worth exploring — such as:

• Notesnook, a privacy-first note-taking app that adds end-to-end encryption into your virtual notebook
• Cryptee, a fully encrypted vault for word processing as well as photo and general file storage
• Simple Keyboard, an Android keyboard app with absolutely no internet access or data collection

These options won’t be right for everyone, and they require at times significant quality-of-life sacrifices compared to the standard Google equivalents. But if privacy is paramount, they’re well worth your while to weigh out.

17. Disable your Google Web & App Activity

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 7/10

By default, Google keeps track of what you do on the web and within its apps, whenever you’re signed into your account (as you generally are while using an Android device). It uses that info to serve up those targeted ads we keep coming back to, of course, but it also uses it to power personalization, results, and recommendations in places like Search, Maps, and also Google Assistant — in the places where that service is still active. Without it enabled, in fact, some of Assistant’s most useful commands won’t work — whether you’ve still got Assistant present on your phone or you’re interacting with it on other Assistant-connected devices.

If you want to disable that tracking, though, you can: Just head back to the Google section of your system settings, tap your name and Google account name once more, and then tap the Manage Your Google Account button followed by “Data & privacy.”

Find and tap “Web & App Activity,” then tap the Turn Off button and decide if you want to simply turn the system off or turn it off and simultaneously delete any already-collected data within it.

Once again, just like with the location history, you can also get more nuanced and instead ask Google to automatically delete this data on a rolling three-, 18-, or 36-month cycle. And you can specify certain areas of data that you do and don’t want included, too.

Deep within your Android device settings are all sorts of options for disabling or just scaling back the amount of activity Google stores about you.

JR Raphael / IDG

18. Disable your device backups

• Time required: 2 minutes
• Inconvenience level: 9/10

Last but not least, Android has the ability to back up your system data and then restore much of your system setup when the need arises. That’s a supremely handy option to have — but it invariably requires some of your information to be stored within Google Drive in order to work.

Specifically, Google maintains a record of what apps you have installed along with a limited amount of app setting data. It also stores your call history, phone settings, and in some cases your SMS messages for future use.

Disabling Android’s automatic backups will make your life significantly more difficult the next time you move to a new phone or reset your current phone, as everything from your previous setup will essentially be lost (or will need to be moved over manually, which is a pretty massive hassle).

If you’d rather reclaim the privacy required by this feature, however, you can turn the feature off by opening up the System section of your phone’s settings, tapping the Backup option, and flipping the toggle next to “Backup by Google One” into the off position.

On Samsung phones, the option is located within the Accounts and Backup section of the settings, under “Back up data” — beneath the “Google Drive” heading. Samsung also maintains its own separate and redundant backup system, which you’ll also see in this same settings section and can also disable, if you so choose.

As with any of these areas, only you can weigh out the added privacy against the lost convenience and figure out what arrangement makes the most sense for you. But now you know where to look — and you can make your own educated decisions.

This article was originally published in June 2020 and updated in December 2024.

Arm has lost a battle over licensing of its microprocessor designs to Qualcomm, ending doubt over the immediate future of some of the chip maker’s products.

The jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware spent the week listening to arguments in the protracted and increasingly rancorous licensing dispute between Arm and Qualcomm over whether Qualcomm is properly licensed to use technology acquired when it bought startup Nuvia in 2021.

The verdict, delivered Friday, is hugely significant, not only for the parties involved but for the maze of other companies that have built their product development around their technology, however, the battle is not over yet. Although the jury found that Qualcomm did not breach Nuvia’s license with Arm, and Qualcomm’s chips using Nuvia technology are properly licensed, it could not agree on whether Nuvia had breached the terms of its license with Arm. That means there could potentially be yet another trial.

After the verdict was delivered, each company released a brief statement.

“We are pleased with today’s decision,” Qualcomm said in a press release. “The jury has vindicated Qualcomm’s right to innovate and affirmed that all the Qualcomm products at issue in the case are protected by Qualcomm’s contract with ARM. We will continue to develop performance-leading, world class products that benefit consumers worldwide, with our incredible Oryon ARM-compliant custom CPUs.”

But for Arm, the fight isn’t over.

“We are disappointed that the jury was unable to reach consensus across the claims,” an Arm spokesperson said in an email. “We intend to seek a retrial due to the jury’s deadlock. From the outset, our top priority has been to protect Arm’s IP and the unparalleled ecosystem we have built with our valued partners over more than 30 years. As always, we are committed to fostering innovation in our rapidly evolving market and serving our partners while advancing the future of computing.” 

However, instead of a retrial, Judge Maryellen Noreika, who presided over the case, recommended that the two companies try to resolve their differences through mediation, reportedly noting that she doesn’t see either company having a clear victory if the case is retried.

It’s an extraordinary clash between companies that until as recently as 2021 seemed like firm allies.

The legal case started with Qualcomm’s 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, designer of the Phoenix datacenter chip, which used Arm’s v8.7-A instruction set. Under Qualcomm, the Phoenix was reinvented as the Oryon chip, the CPU core of a more general microprocessor used inside the company’s Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Importantly, the royalty that Qualcomm agreed to pay under its Architecture License Agreement (ALA) with Arm was lower than that of Nuvia. Qualcomm believed this more favorable deal should apply to Nuvia development going forward because most of its subsequent Snapdragon development was done after the acquisition.

Arm disagreed, and argued that Qualcomm should pay the rate agreed with Nuvia. According to court testimony by Arm CEO Rene Haas this week, the lower royalty would cause a drop in revenue of $50 million. Failing to reach an agreement with Qualcomm, the company decided to sue, the first time it has taken such action against a customer since its founding in 1990.

This is where things became a bit muddy. Why did Arm decide to sue over a relatively small sum, and why did Qualcomm refuse to concede? This week in court, a wide range of arguments and counter arguments were laid out, mostly saying that each company believed the other was trying to sabotage its business.

Make Qualcomm great again

As it attempts to diversify away from relying on mobile chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC platform is seen as critical for its future. This, it hopes, will allow it to take on Intel and AMD in the general microprocessor market while integrating the new-fangled AI capabilities important to the PC sector.

In October, Arm cancelled Qualcomm’s license to the Nuvia ALA. It also demanded the destruction of Nuvia designs developed prior to the merger. Clearly, a verdict in favor of Arm would put Qualcomm in a tight corner, and also a who’s who of tech companies — Microsoft, Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung — currently using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon designs.

This week, Qualcomm put forward an alternative view to explain Arm’s motivations. According to Qualcomm’s lawyers, Arm harbors ambitions to develop competing chips of its own, making it a direct competitor to Qualcomm. Evidence for this remains circumstantial, but to back this up Qualcomm claimed that Arm at one point misled it into disbanding its development team.

Stop being cheap

A difficulty for outsiders is untangling exactly what is really at issue and whether there’s more to this than meets the eye. According to Arm, it’s about licensing agreements and the fees that arise from them. It believes Qualcomm used its IP in Nuvia-originated IP and should pay what Nuvia agreed and stop being cheap.

Qualcomm’s argument seems to be that this is a shakedown. And yet there seem to be deeper currents. Perhaps they see each as competitors in the longer term, and the battle is competitive jockeying.

Notably, Qualcomm was a major opponent to Nvidia’s proposed 2021 takeover of Arm, abandoned in the face of regulatory hurdles, and even suggested investing in the UK company. For its part, Arm upset Qualcomm by contacting dozens of its customers to inform them of the termination of the Nuvia license. Each round of conflict deepened the antipathy.

It’s the sort of dispute that happens all the time in the tech industry, a sector built on patents and cross-licensing of IP. But what was highly unusual about this dispute is that it wasn’t resolved without going to court, a hugely risky situation for both parties should they lose.

On the surface, it has never been a battle of equals: Qualcomm’s annual revenue is 10 to 15 times that of Arm’s. That said, since Arm listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its value has soared, bringing its market capitalization much closer to that of the US company.

Arm is important for its size and Qualcomm is large and ambitious. Each would like the other’s crown. Both are angry. What’s not yet clear is whether the verdict of a Delaware courthouse, including outright victory, will deliver what either company wants.

Arm is waiting to see if it has won a battle over licensing of its microprocessor designs to Qualcomm that has cast doubt over the immediate future of some of the chip maker’s products.

The jury in the US District Court for the District of Delaware spent the week listening to arguments in the protracted and increasingly rancorous licensing dispute between Arm and Qualcomm and all that’s left is to hear their verdict.

The verdict, expected on Friday, could be hugely significant, not only for the parties involved but for the maze of other companies that have built their product development around their technology.

It’s an extraordinary clash between companies that until as recently as 2021 seemed like firm allies.

The legal case started with Qualcomm’s 2021 acquisition of Nuvia, designer of the Phoenix datacenter chip, which used Arm’s v8.7-A instruction set. Under Qualcomm, the Phoenix was reinvented as the Oryon chip, the CPU core of a more general microprocessor used inside the company’s Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC).

Importantly, the royalty that Qualcomm agreed to pay under its Architecture License Agreement (ALA) with Arm was lower than that of Nuvia. Qualcomm believed this more favorable deal should apply to Nuvia development going forward because most of its subsequent Snapdragon development was done after the acquisition.

Arm disagreed and argued that Qualcomm should pay the rate agreed with Nuvia. According to court testimony by Arm CEO Rene Haas this week, the lower royalty would cause a drop in revenue of $50 million. Failing to reach an agreement with Qualcomm, the company decided to sue, the first time it has taken such action against a customer since its founding in 1990.

This is where things became a bit muddy. Why did Arm decide to sue over a relatively small sum, and why did Qualcomm refuse to concede? This week in court a wide range of arguments and counter arguments were laid out, mostly that each company believed the other was trying to sabotage its business.

Make Qualcomm great again

As it attempts to diversify away from relying on mobile chips, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC platform is seen as critical for its future. This, it hopes, will allow it to take on Intel and AMD in the general microprocessor market while integrating the new-fangled AI capabilities important to the PC sector.

In October, Arm cancelled Qualcomm’s license to the Nuvia ALA. It also demanded the destruction of Nuvia designs developed prior to the merger. Clearly, a verdict in favor of Arm would put Qualcomm in a tight corner, and also a who’s who of tech companies — Microsoft, Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung — currently using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon designs.

This week, Qualcomm put forward an alternative view to explain Arm’s motivations. According to Qualcomm’s lawyers, Arm harbors ambitions to develop competing chips of its own, making it a direct competitor to Qualcomm. Evidence for this remains circumstantial, but to back this up Qualcomm claimed that Arm at one point misled it into disbanding its development team.

Stop being cheap

A difficulty for outsiders is untangling exactly what is really at issue and whether there’s more to this than meets the eye. According to Arm it’s about licensing agreements and the fees that arise from them. It believes Qualcomm used its IP in Nuvia-originated IP and should pay what Nuvia agreed and stop being cheap.

Qualcomm’s argument seems to be that this is a shakedown. And yet there seem to be deeper currents. Perhaps they see each as competitors in the longer term, and the battle is competitive jockeying.

Notably, Qualcomm was a major opponent to Nvidia’s proposed 2021 takeover of Arm, abandoned in the face of regulatory hurdles, and even suggested investing in the UK company. For its part, Arm upset Qualcomm by contacting dozens of its customers to inform them of the termination of the Nuvia license. Each round of conflict deepened the antipathy.

It’s the sort of dispute that happens all the time in the tech industry, a sector built on patents and cross-licensing of IP. But what was highly unusual about this dispute is that it wasn’t resolved without going to court, a hugely risky situation for both parties should they lose.

On the surface, it has never been a battle of equals: Qualcomm’s annual revenue is 10 to 15 times that of Arm’s. That said, since Arm listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its value has soared, bringing its market capitalization much closer to that of the US company.

Arm is important for its size and Qualcomm is large and ambitious. Each would like the other’s crown. Both are angry. What’s not yet clear is whether the verdict of a Delaware courthouse, including outright victory, will deliver what either company wants.

Apple has had a busy year in enterprise tech. Apple Intelligence, spatial computing, the war to protect the user experience against excessive regulation, security, privacy and continued improvements to Apple Silicon and valuable OS improvements for enterprise deployment have occupied much of its time. With this in mind, it’s a good time to speak with Apple device management and security leaders from Jamf, Kandji, Jumpcloud, and Fleet to find out what mattered most in 2024, and what they expect in 2025.

Fleet: Crowdstrike was important — to Apple

I spoke with Fleet CEO Mike McNeil. Fleet is an open-source MDM provider that now supports iPhones, iPads, Macs, Windows, and Linux devices.

In 2024, what were the three most important Apple-related moments for enterprise users?

1. “One of the most significant Apple-related events occurred despite not directly affecting Apple itself. This was the CrowdStrike out(r)age.”
2. “Apple’s ongoing innovation with VisionOS not only challenges businesses to think creatively and find innovative ways to work but also enhances accessibility in the workforce.
3. “Apple’s first release of AI capabilities, allowing users to access them without privacy violations or security issues, is a pretty significant milestone. It’s like the promise of Siri is finally coming true.”

Looking ahead to 2025, what do you expect will be the biggest concern(s)/challenge(s) for Apple in the enterprise?  “As more organizations enroll more personal devices and BYOD programs, the attack surface for adversaries expands significantly — meaning, if you manage to pop one employee’s phone, you can now access whatever they could on their phone,” McNeil said. “Consequently, people who manage devices need to invest more in preventing both traditional malware-based attacks and sophisticated social engineering tactics.”

What do you think enterprise users most need from Apple that it does not yet provide? “A comprehensive and robust declarative management framework that enables devices to maintain a known good state irrespective of their network connectivity or environmental conditions.

“Apple would be very well served by investing more in getting people to adopt existing features rather than adding more product managers and names for slight variations of the same things.”

How do you see the future of Apple in business across the next 12 months? “Apple is such an amazing company. We are only going to see more and more Macs in the enterprise this year, as user choice programs and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs evolve and become the standard practice rather than an exception. With Managed Apple IDs catching on, we’ll see more secondary computing devices like Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro in enterprise environments.

Jumpcloud: Identity, security, and AI

I got the following thoughts from Joel Rennich, senior vice president for product management at Jumpcloud. The company earlier this year published survey data that shows a big switch in favor of using Apple devices in the enterprise. They expect this to continue.

In 2024, what were the three most important Apple-related moments for enterprise users? 

1. “The introduction of Apple Intelligence — not so much in the sense that it will change the world, although it might, but more so in how it’s challenging Enterprise IT departments on how to respond to a new way of doing AI. With Apple’s use of on-device and Private Cloud Compute processing, a new dimension has been added to thinking about how to engage with AI with sensitive data.
2. “Changes to how Managed Apple Accounts, formerly known as Managed Apple IDs, are created and used. Beyond a name change, MAAs have become a lot more functional to the point where most enterprises should be able to start using them. With the introduction of OpenID Connect Federation (OIDC) and System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (SCIM) flows to Apple Business Manager — and giving organizations a lot more control over how MAAs are created in the first place — I expect adoption of Apple accounts to go up significantly. There’s still more work to be done, and organizations will still get annoyed by some of Apple’s insistence on being Apple, but most IT departments will be able to make good use of the changes today.
3. “While this one isn’t entirely of Apple’s making, they are certainly championing the use of passkeys across the board. The speed at which passkeys have taken over OTP and push as MFA or as full on authentication has been astonishing. If you’ve never used a passkey on your iPhone to sign in to a website on your PC, you should run, not walk, to experience that. It’s a simple thing, using a QR code with some Bluetooth help, but the security underlying all of this and the general ease of use of the process is astounding.”

Looking ahead to 2025, what do you expect will be the biggest concern(s)/challenge(s) for Apple in the enterprise?  “While there are a number of global threats and other issues that impact Apple as much as other vendors, the biggest challenge for Apple in the enterprise is Apple itself. This is the same as it has been since Apple started making inroads into enterprise with the original iPhone. The aspects that make Apple great in the consumer space are many times inherently at odds with what enterprises are looking for, and in most cases Apple refuses to compromise on aspects like user privacy and experience.

“I don’t expect Apple to change much here. As it continues to expand its enterprise offering, customers will consistently ask for…even more controls and abilities to take away from the experience end users expect from Apple products.”

What do you think enterprise users most need from Apple that it does not yet provide? “Apple has made real strides with their Platform SSO functionality. However, it still doesn’t do the most basic function that enterprises are asking for, which is the automatic creation of the first new user on the system. Instead, customers still have to cobble together a combination of a number solutions to achieve this. It’s clear that Apple was intending PSSO for a different set of problems — the establishment of a SSO session from a user login — but customers still need this functionality.”

“[Users also need] a consistent method to enforce system updates. Apple keeps almost getting this right, but then missing something important. While Declarative Device Management can help, there’s still a lot of consistency in the process that’s lacking. This is a serious miss for Apple as they control the entire chain here.”

How do you see the future of Apple in business across the next 12 months? “Apple will do fine. With the recent refresh of almost their entire hardware lineup to the M4 and consistent improvements to the software, Apple will continue to grow incrementally in the enterprise space. Mobile will still be the biggest reason that enterprises need to ensure they understand what Apple is doing, but solving for mobile pretty much ensures a good experience for any Mac users.

“Apple devices will continue to be at the upper end of the hardware quality spectrum and the MacBook Air will become even more attractive with the M4 chip and the price points staying low. The Apple Vision Pro won’t break out into the mainstream in 2025, but Apple will continue to refine, and some developers will continue to work with it as they look for a compelling reason to make VR/AR more commonplace.”

Kandji: Device management, spatial computing, and AI

Weldon Dodd, senior vice president of global partnerships at Kandji made four substantial predictions for the coming year, supplementing his expectations around enterprise deployment of Apple-supporting AI from earlier in 2024. 

Hybrid work will drive innovation in device management: “The hybrid work model will hit a tipping point, as employers push for more in-office presence while employees increasingly demand flexibility. This growing divide will catalyze innovation in device management. Many companies have already invested in streamlining onboarding and remote support, but now the challenge will be adapting those systems to also serve in-office environments. The key will be prioritizing automation and efficiency, which reduces the need for manual fixes and enhances the user experience across all work settings. As businesses navigate this tension, the future of device management will focus on creating seamless and flexible solutions that balance both employee autonomy and the need for in-person collaboration.”

Spatial computing becomes (more) mainstream: “Apple Vision Pro will continue to evolve in 2025, becoming the more accessible productivity-focused tool that Apple has always wanted. Apple is expected to make the device more affordable, widening its appeal to consumers, while also maintaining its strength in workspaces — especially with the recent software updates that allow for ultra-wide displays and seamless Mac integration.

“This shift could change how consumers interact with their devices, bringing spatial computing closer to the mainstream. In addition, rumors of a new Siri-powered ‘kitchen device’ suggest Apple aspires to make daily life even more convenient with smart, hands-free solutions that leverage the growing capabilities of Apple Intelligence. Together, these innovations will drive deeper integration of Apple’s ecosystem across both personal and professional spaces.”

Businesses will use proprietary LLMs and RAG to unlock their own data: “We are going to see a big shift as businesses start using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and LLMs with their corporate data. Rather than relying solely on third-party models like OpenAI, companies will begin asking these models more specific questions about their business, such as, ‘Is there anomalous behavior happening on this device we manage,’ or ‘What does this data tell me about our device management security?’

“By connecting LLMs with internal data, businesses will be able to get answers that aren’t just based on general world knowledge, but are much more tailored to their needs. As companies make this move, they’ll also need to pay close attention to data governance and privacy, especially as regulations like GDPR implement stricter guidelines regarding the handling of customer data. If done right, this approach could unlock valuable insights, but businesses must balance the power of AI with well-established data practices to keep afloat.”

Apple’s M4 Chip will enable on-device AI: “Apple’s M4 chip will make on-device AI the new standard, enabling more AI processing to happen directly on devices rather than relying on the cloud. For consumers, this shift means faster, more personalized experiences with greater privacy. This is because less data will need to be shared or stored remotely. For businesses, the impact could be substantial, particularly related to Apple-managed accounts, making it easier to deliver tailored services.

“And for the business user that requires top level speed and performance — think video editing, software deployment or AI development using LLMs — the M4 is going to be untouchable by the competition.”

What Jamf sees coming…

A veteran of the Apple device management space, Jamf also focused on AI and the part it will play in the coming year. The company recently introduced a host of new tools for Apple device management and deployment.

“With generative AI quickly becoming a pervasive fixture in the technology landscape, businesses are reacting with catch-all policies to restrict usage and control how sensitive information and intellectual property flows outside the organization’s data protection boundary,” said Michael Covington, vice president of portfolio strategy. “For many, this means blanket policies forbidding the use of AI until reviewed by an oversight board.

“While oversight is good, it can significantly delay the adoption of useful tools if the process is not streamlined to allow for timely decision-making. The recent release of Apple Intelligence serves as a good case study on how ‘AI’ keywords can trigger restrictive business policies, despite an implementation that keeps private data on-device and includes controls to govern the use of third-party AI models.

“In order to enable business leaders to more effectively cope with the onslaught of ‘AI-enabled’ tools — and to minimize an oversight bottleneck — the industry will need to develop a set of foundational rubrics to guide in more timely assessments of AI technologies. As a result, I predict we will see a renewed focus on data classification labels, a better understanding of AI processing locations, and a demand for confidentiality assertions from vendors as private data traverses their infrastructure.

“As the industry transitions to an application-driven phase of AI, it is imperative that organizations be equipped to make thoughtful and timely decisions about how the technology can be used responsibly to drive business objectives.”

“As genAI becomes demystified, the true effectiveness and value of solutions for enterprises will become clearer,” said Jamf CIO Linh Lam. “(Many) companies quickly entered the genAI market over the past year or two. It’s a crowded space that can easily overwhelm even leaders of technology companies who are looking to select the right genAI solution for their businesses. In 2025, while the hype cycle will continue to evolve, we’ll see the more effective solutions surface and more customers focusing on solutions that bring the most real value to their businesses.

“As with any ‘hot new tech’ on the block, the buzz around this latest emerging technology will start to calm, and we’ll start to see genAI mature. We’ll start to see what value these tools can provide for businesses, and which perform better than the others. It’s going to be a year of cutting through the noise, and those who can break through that will be the companies that stick around for years to come.”

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe. 

Behind the responses from genAI models are testers who evaluate those answers for accuracy, but a report released this week casts doubt on the process.

According to a story published on Wednesday, contractors working on Google Gemini are now being directed to evaluate AI prompts and responses in areas in which they have no background, rather than being allowed to skip them as before.

This flies in the face of the “Building responsibly” section of the Gemini 2.0 announcement, which said, “As we develop these new technologies, we recognize the responsibility it entails, and the many questions AI agents open up for safety and security. That is why we are taking an exploratory and gradual approach to development, conducting research on multiple prototypes, iteratively implementing safety training, working with trusted testers and external experts and performing extensive risk assessments and safety and assurance evaluations.”

Mismatch raises questions

According to TechCrunch, “a new internal guideline passed down from Google to contractors working on Gemini has led to concerns that Gemini could be more prone to spouting out inaccurate information on highly sensitive topics, like healthcare, to regular people.”

It said that the new guideline reads: “You should not skip prompts that require specialized domain knowledge.” Contractors are instead instructed to rate the parts they understand and add a note that they lack the necessary domain knowledge for the rest.

And a blog that appeared on Artificial Intelligence+ on Thursday noted that, while “contractors hired by Google to support Gemini are key players in the evaluation process … one of the challenges is that [they] are often required to evaluate responses that might lie outside their own areas of expertise. For instance, while some may come from technical backgrounds, the AI can produce outputs related to literature, finance, healthcare, or even scientific research.”

It said, “this mismatch raises questions about how effectively human oversight can serve in validating AI-generated content across diverse fields.”

However, Google pointed out in a later statement to TechCrunch that the “raters” don’t only review content, they “provide valuable feedback on style, format, and other factors.”

‘Hidden component’ of genAI

When organizations are looking to leverage an AI model, it is important to reflect on responsible AI principles, Thomas Randall, research lead at Info-Tech Research Group said Thursday.

He said that there is “a hidden component to the generative AI market landscape: companies that fall under the guise of ‘reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)’. These companies, such as Appen, Scale AI, and Clickworker, rely on a gig economy of millions of crowd workers for data production and training the AI algorithms that we find with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others. RLHF companies pose issues for fair labor practices, and are scored poorly by Fairwork.”

Last year, Fairwork, which defines itself as an “action-research project that aims to shed light on how technological changes affect working conditions around the world,” released a set of AI principles that, it said, “assess the working conditions behind the development and deployment of AI systems in the context of an employment relation.”

There is, it stated at the time, “nothing ‘artificial’ about the immense amount of human labor that builds, supports, and maintains AI products and services. Many workers interact with AI systems in the workplace, and many others perform the critical data work that underpins the development of AI systems.”

Questions to ask

The executive branch of an organization looking to leverage an AI model, said Randall, needs to ask itself an assortment of questions such as “does the AI model you’re using rely on or use an RLHF company? If so, was the crowd worker pool diverse enough and provided sufficient expertise? How opaque was the training process for the models you are using? Can you trace data production? If the AI vendor does not know the answers to these questions, the organization needs to be prepared to take on accountability for any outputs the AI models provide.”

Paul Smith-Goodson, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, added that it is vitally important that Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) be implemented, “because AI models do hallucinate and it is one way to make sure that language models are putting out the right information.”

He echoed Rick Villars, IDC group vice president of worldwide research, who earlier this year said, “more and more the solutions around RAG — and enabling people to use that more effectively — are going to focus on tying into the right data that has business value, as opposed to just the raw productivity improvements.”

A ‘corrosive effect’ on workers

Ryan Clarkson, managing partner at the Clarkson Law Firm, based in Malibu, California, said that the rapid growth of generative AI as a business has had corrosive effects on tech workers around the world.

For example, last week, workers filed a class action lawsuit through his firm against AI data processing company Scale AI, whose services include providing the human labor to label the data used in training AI models and in shaping their responses to queries.

The Scale AI lawsuit alleges poor working conditions and exploitive behavior by Scale, also saying that workers responsible for generating much of its product were mischaracterized by the company as independent contractors instead of employees.

One key technique in the Windows repair playbook involves wiping out everything on the storage device (typically C:\) from which Windows boots and on which that OS resides. Prosaically enough, this device is often called the boot/system drive or disk.

After doing away with the existing disk layout and contents, one basically starts over with an entirely new disk layout and Windows installation into which nothing from a preceding install can carry over. Windows professionals call this a “clean install” because it wipes the disk before setting up a new disk layout, and installing a fresh, new copy of the Windows operating system and various other important supporting elements.

Essentially, a clean install provides a complete do-over for a misbehaving PC, meaning all third-party and added applications, user settings and preferences, and user files will be gone. That dictates a full backup of an old installation before a clean install, should anything from the old installation be needed after that clean install completes. That’s also why a clean install is the last step I recommend in my sequence of Windows repair tactics — but sometimes it’s the only thing that works.

Clean install via Reset this PC

Both Windows 10 and Windows 11 offer a “Reset this PC” option as part of Settings’ built-in recovery tools. Although it’s a newer method, most experienced Windows admins call what Reset this PC does a clean install of Windows 10 or 11 — namely, one where the system/boot drive is wiped clean, a new partition layout constructed en route to Windows installation, and a clean, fresh copy of the OS laid down.

Here’s how to get there in each OS:

• Windows 11: Settings > System > Recovery > Reset this PC
• Windows 10: Settings > Update & Security > Recovery > Reset this PC

Both approaches show a window like the one in Figure 1, which provides options to “Keep my files” (above) or “Remove everything” (below). Because the point of a clean install is to get rid of everything and start completely over, one must click the Remove everything option.

Figure 1: Select Remove everything and proceed to the next step.

Ed Tittel / IDG

The Reset this PC tool advances to the next set of options, which allow you to grab files from Windows Update in the cloud (“Cloud download”) or reuse local Windows OS files on the current system (“Local reinstall”), as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: For best possible results, choose the Cloud download option to get known, good files from Microsoft.

Ed Tittel / IDG

The Cloud download option grabs fresh, new files from Microsoft servers, from which the reinstall proceeds. This is recommended, because problems with local files may affect the local recovery partition or folder that a reset is supposed to address. Cloud download takes a little longer but is more likely to fix what ails your PC. That said, Local reinstall, which grabs files from the local Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), may make sense for those with slow or expensive internet connections.

Once the files are all available, the Windows installer (setup.exe) takes over and starts a routine Windows 10 or 11 installation. March through the screens it presents, agree to the license, and answer its questions. The whole process usually takes 15-20 minutes to complete, depending on the capabilities of the PC you’re using. (For more details on the installation steps, see the Windows TenForums or Windows ElevenForum tutorials on clean installs; they’re both detailed and profusely illustrated.)

Alternate clean install methods should Reset this PC fail

Reset this PC is convenient and requires no supplementary media, but it doesn’t always work. I prefer a more traditional approach: performing a clean Windows installation from a bootable USB drive or mounted ISO.

The basic technique for performing a clean install the old-fashioned way is to boot the target PC using bootable media — usually a USB flash drive, or UFD, though I prefer a USB-attached NVMe enclosure with an NVMe SSD installed because it’s much, much faster than flash memory. Such a setup includes the desired Windows installation files.

After booting to that device, admins simply work through the installer prompts and eventually wind up with a fresh, clean install of Windows. There are many ways to get there from here, but I describe two favorites.

Method 1: Visit the appropriate Download Windows page, use the MCT

This approach relies on bootable media that includes an image file (ISO) for some particular version of Windows. Indeed, there are three such pages currently available from Microsoft, depending on which version (and kind) of Windows you want to install:

• Download Windows 10: Provides access to Home and Pro versions of Windows 10 in various forms, languages, and so forth. Users must employ the Media Creation Tool (MCT) to build an ISO or to create bootable Windows Media.
• Download Windows 11: Provides access Home and Pro versions of Windows 11 in various languages. Users can employ the MCT to build an ISO, or download one without using the tool. It’s recommended for building bootable media.
• Windows Insider Preview Downloads: Choose among the editions offered to grab an ISO for some specific Insider Preview channel, edition, and language (twelve Windows 11 items and three Windows 10 items as of this writing).
• Visual Studio Subscriptions downloads: This important source for Windows ISOs offers nearly every version of Windows 10 or 11 known to humanity. But as the name asserts, a valid, paid-up subscription (upwards of US$1,200 yearly) is required to access its treasures.

Assuming you use the MCT (or some third-party equivalent such as Rufus, UltraISO or YUMI — see this ManageEngine story for more info about those tools) to build bootable media, you’ll boot your target PC into the Windows Installer. Working the with MCT, you’ll walk through the following steps (identical for all Windows 10 and 11 versions, editions, and so forth):

• Accept the Microsoft Software License Terms.
• Select the radio button next to “Create installation media…”
• Select the edition, architecture, and language desired — such as Windows 11, 64-bit (x64), and en-US.
• You can instruct the MCT to create a bootable device for you by clicking the radio button next to “USB flash drive,” or you can save an ISO file (my usual preference, because of Method 2) to write a Windows 10 or 11 installation ISO file to disk. Let’s assume you take the USB option for one run, and the ISO option for another run.

Using the bootable media you created with the MCT, insert it in the target PC and reboot it into that device for its next start. Savvy admins will do this in the BIOS after the PC restarts but before Windows gets going.

Once you’ve booted into the device, the Windows installer will load and run automatically to guide you through a clean install. Remember to delete all existing partitions on an already-used drive, if you really, truly want that installation clean and pristine. That’s key!

Method 2: Download Windows, use Ventoy

Ventoy is a GitHub project that offers an amazing capability: it creates a tiny 32MB EFI boot partition and allocates the rest of the USB medium to an exFAT partition. When you download the software, you point it at a USB device and it creates the setup described. Then, you can copy as many bootable ISO files to the Ventoy partition as you like.

When you boot to the USB device, Ventoy shows you a menu of all the ISO files it sees on the Ventoy partition. You can choose any one of them to boot into. Ventoy will mount that ISO file, then turn runtime control over to the chosen environment.

I’ve gotten in the habit of keeping numerous ISO images in Ventoy, including multiple versions of Windows 10 and 11s and the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (a.k.a. DaRT). Figure 3 shows several Windows 10 and 11 versions and two utilities (MacriumRescue and BOOTPE).

Figure 3: On the G: Ventoy partition, this snippet shows six Windows 11 ISOs, eight Windows 10 ISOs, and two utilities

Ed Tittel / IDG

Ventoy has the advantage of being able to accommodate ISOs of arbitrary size, so that admins need not be constrained by the 4GB limit imposed for FAT32 formats. You can even use the DISM command to capture a Windows image file (.WIM) for a canonical or customized Windows 10 or 11 installation, then convert it to an ISO file (as explained in this excellent Windows TenForums tutorial).

After the installation

After you’ve performed a clean install using any method, you’ll be starting over from scratch. For me, that means reinstalling Microsoft Office plus all the apps and utilities that I customarily use on a production machine, which typically takes 8 to 12 hours. To speed the process along, I recommend using either the PatchMyPC Home Updater or Ninite utility, or using the winget command to import an already-exported configuration file.

Thankfully, Reset this PC usually works

For those using supported Windows 10 and 11 versions, the Reset this PC option in the proper Settings…Recovery context should make it simple and straightforward to clean-install Windows.

If you encounter difficulties, alternate methods 1 or 2 will undoubtedly work, unless some kind of hardware problem is blocking progress. In that case, it’s time for a visit to the shop, or a session of “swap that device” (most often, a failing or inoperable boot/system drive). Cheers!

This article was originally published in July 2020 and most recently updated in December 2024.

We talk about tons of tips for making the most of Android and tapping into all the operating system’s easily overlooked options, features, and shortcuts.

But when it comes to real-world productivity, Google’s actual operating system is really only half the story.

With Android in particular, lots of core OS-level elements exist as their own standalone apps — technically separate pieces of the puzzle that live in the Play Store and are updated numerous times a year in a way that reaches all of us at the same time. It’s a sharp contrast to the all-in-one strategy on the other side of the mobile-tech divide, and it offers up some pretty interesting (if also largely unappreciated) advantages for those of us here in the land o’ Googley matters.

Over the past year, I’ve shared some splendid suggestions for digging in deeper to those apps and uncovering all sorts of buried treasures — genuinely useful options and adjustments that’ll help you work faster and more efficiently and generally just have a better all-around Android experience.

It’s a lot to take in, and it’s all too easy to miss (or maybe just forget!) something worthwhile along the way. So here, as the end of the year approaches, are 12 of my favorite collections of Google Android app wisdom from the past 12 months — with a whopping 124 top-notch tricks within ’em.

Use the quiet holiday weeks ahead of us to take ’em all in and grant yourself some new spectacular new superpowers for 2025 — and if you aren’t already receiving my Android Intelligence newsletter, by golly, make it your first order of business to fix that now. I send out three new things to try every Friday, and the best tip I can offer for the coming year is to make sure you don’t miss out.

Now, where were we? Oh — right…

The best Google Android app advice from 2024 20 handy hidden tricks for Google Calendar on Android

Upgrade your agenda with these tucked-away time-savers in the Android Calendar app.

5 advanced Gboard tricks for smarter Android typing

Google’s Gboard Android keyboard has some smart systems for improving your text input experience. Ready to become a total typing pro?

8 out-of-sight superpowers for Google Contacts on Android

Google Contacts might not be Android’s flashiest app, but it has some surprisingly useful tricks lurking in its corners.

6 secret settings for a smarter Chrome Android setup

Supercharge your smartphone browsing experience with these powerful yet completely concealed options for Google’s Chrome Android app.

13 tricks for more efficient Android messaging

These easy-to-miss advanced options for Google’s Android Messages app will help you save time and communicate more effectively.

16 handy hidden tricks for Google Maps on Android

Take advantage of all Maps has to offer by tapping into these easily overlooked features and options.

26 note-perfecting tips for Google Keep on Android

Time to tap into all of Keep’s potential and turn Google’s note-taking app into a powerful mobile productivity tool.

A powerful Android dark mode enhancement

One quick switch within the Android Chrome app can take your web-wide dark mode adventures to a whole new level.

5 nifty new gestures for the YouTube Android mini-player

Google’s YouTube mini-player has some noteworthy new tricks up its sleeves — and it’s up to you to find ’em.

20 smart search terms for Google Photos on Android

Find what you need fast with these advanced search commands for your Android Photos app.

A simple new way to set a custom ringtone on Android

At last, an easy shortcut for setting, finding, and managing custom ringtones for contacts on Android. Hip, hip, hoorah!

3 buzzworthy Android alarm enhancements

Give your next alarm some extra pizazz with these hard to find but delightful to use options.

Bonus: Goodbye, Gemini — a sanity-saving Google Search switch

Take a step back in time to a simpler, less bloated form of search without all the unreliable AI poppycock.

2025, here we come!

Your mission for the new year, should you choose to accept it: Get yourself set with my Android Intelligence newsletter and get my Android Notification Power-Pack — six powerful enhancements for any device — as a special instant bonus.

In the era of digital transformation, public safety stands at a critical crossroads. Law enforcement agencies globally are under increasing scrutiny to enhance transparency, efficiency, and trust within their communities. Against this backdrop, Kazakhstan’s “Digital Policeman” initiative has emerged as a shining example of technological innovation in policing.

The initiative leverages state-of-the-art technologies like smart badges and military-grade mobile devices, designed to empower officers while ensuring accountability. These smart badges go beyond conventional body cameras, offering features such as continuous, tamper-proof video recording, GPS tracking, encrypted data handling, and emergency alert systems. This cutting-edge approach has turned routine policing into a sophisticated operation backed by real-time data and insights.

Why it matters: Key impacts

The numbers speak volumes. Since its inception, the Digital Policeman project has documented over 6,000 bribery attempts, recorded 443,765 administrative violations, and solved 2,613 crimes—all while saving Kazakhstan’s national budget $6 million. With over 10,000 smart badges and 21,000 tablets deployed, the project is reshaping the very fabric of public safety.

These advancements extend beyond technology. By addressing the limitations of traditional tools, such as unreliable video recorders prone to tampering, the project has reduced corruption, streamlined workflows, and enhanced officer safety. Moreover, officers now have access to tools that enable quicker decision-making and more effective resource allocation, fostering greater community trust.

Global leadership in law enforcement innovation

The success of the Digital Policeman initiative positions Kazakhstan as a leader in police modernization, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global pioneers like the United States, Korea, and Scotland. The initiative’s integration of secure, military-grade technology sets a benchmark, inspiring other nations, including Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, to explore similar advancements.

Looking ahead: The future of public safety

Kazakhstan is not stopping here. The initiative is poised for expansion, with plans to incorporate advanced features like facial recognition and direct integration with law enforcement databases. These enhancements will further amplify operational efficiency, enabling real-time communication of alerts and seamless access to critical information during patrols.

Beyond policing, this technology holds potential applications in other public safety domains such as traffic management, fisheries supervision, and forestry oversight. By extending the reach of smart badges, Kazakhstan continues to redefine the possibilities of public safety in the digital age.

Why read the full spotlight paper?

This article only scratches the surface of the profound impact the Digital Policeman project is making. For a comprehensive look at the strategies, technologies, and lessons learned from this groundbreaking initiative, download the full spotlight paper. Discover how Kazakhstan is charting the future of law enforcement, balancing technological innovation with community trust.

Unlock the future of policing. Download the full report today!