How to prevent apps from killing your data plan

Getting to the end of the month without reaching the limit of the data plan has become, for many, an impossible mission According to the Cisco Networking Index (VNI) report, mobile data traffic will multiply by seven during the period between 2016 and 2021, both globally and in Spain.

This reveals the large amount of data that smartphone users consume on a daily basis, a figure that is often higher than normal due to “data-swallowing” applications ”, which end the tariff without the user being aware of it.

If you are one of those who feels that your data plan falls short every month, we will show you below the apps responsible for the problem, and a series of tips to prevent them from consuming all your Internet in a few days.

Facebook, watch out for automatic video playback

This app, which is available on most of today's mobile phones, is one of the quickest to drain your monthly data plan. The routine of users is to consult the main Facebook page every so often, something that makes their mobile internet fly quickly.

One of the main reasons for this consumption is that, when putting on Facebook, even if it is only for a brief moment, the videos are broadcast automatically.How to solve this problem? It is best to limit autoplay videos to WiFi or directly disable them.

To do this, what you have to do is open the Facebook application and touch the three lines that appear just in the lower right corner of it. After that, you must choose the Configuration option, and within it the Account configuration.

Once you access it, you must choose the option Videos and photos. After that, select Autoplay, and then select Only on Wi-Fi connections or Never play videos automatically.

If you carry out these steps, every time you open Facebook your smartphone will use less data and you will be able to navigate with the certainty that the data consumed will be much less than what you are used to.

Instagram, be careful with videos and photos

Instagram has become one of the most popular applications among users around the world.What started as a place to share photos has evolved and now allows for much more. What is the problem related to data consumption? Well, the application preloads the videos so that they start playing automatically

However, there is a way to prevent Instagram from doing this to videos and kill your data rate quickly. The first thing you should do is open the app and put your profile page. After that, open the settings icon and click on Cellular data usage. Then, you must activate the option to Use less data.

After performing this step the app will not allow videos to be preloaded when you are on a mobile connection.

Snapchat and Travel Mode

The Snapchat application has a similar problem to Instagram in terms of data consumption, since automatically preloads stories and Snaps to show them to the user when connected , something that consumes a lot of data.

To prevent this from happening all you need to do is turn on the Travel Mode option in the app, something that makes Snaps and Stories take longer to load, but still worth the mention. Shame if you just want to save data.

The steps to follow are to open the Snapchat application and slide your finger down to see the screen where your profile appears. Then, you must look at the upper right corner and press the configuration icon. Finally, you must scroll down until you find the Manage option, and then activate Travel Mode, which will appear among the possibilities.

Twitter and videos

This social network has the same problem as the previous applications: the videos. For this reason, on Twitter you should take into account that the automatic reproduction of videos is also one of the main causes of the consumption of your mobile data.

To avoid this problem, what you should do is open the application and click on the Account button, which is located right in the lower right corner. Then you need to go to the tool icon at the top of this page and select Settings. After that, you will find the Data Usage option, click on it. Then, tap on the option to Autoplay video or High quality video. After that, choose Wi-Fi Only or Never.

Netflix, control the video quality

In the case of Netflix, the mobile application consumes a large amount of data, but to avoid this you can reduce the video quality. To do this, you have to click on the triple line icon, which is located in the upper left, and click on App Settings.After that, press Cellular data usage and deactivate the option Set automatically.

Then choose the option the Low or Medium option to watch the videos in lower quality when you don't have a WiFi connection.