'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?
ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.
ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.
What is Android 12 Game Mode and should you be using it?
With the release of Android 12, Google introduced a new feature called Game Mode, which provides a few features gamers depend on to get the most out of the Android gaming experience.
What is Game Mode?
Game Mode optimizes a device for performance and battery life and is done on a game-by-game basis by developers. Of course, that means Game Mode may not be enabled for every game.
Another caveat to Game Mode is that it's only available to Pixel devices.
Game Mode also brings with it a Game Dashboard, which appears in-game and adds the following features to Android:
- In-game screenshots.
- Frames Per Second check.
- Automatically enables Do Not Disturb.
- Video recording.
- YouTube streaming.
All of the above features are taken care of without interrupting gameplay, so it's a real blessing for serious mobile gamers.
Let's find out how to enable Game Mode on your Pixel device.
How do you enable Game Mode?
The first you need to do is enable Game Mode. To do this, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app (either from within the App Drawer or the Notification Shade).
- Locate and tap Notifications.
- Locate and tap Do Not Disturb.
- Locate and tap Schedules.
- Tap the gear icon associated with Gaming.
- Tap the ON/OFF slider for both Game Dashboard and Do Not Disturb for games (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Enabling Game Mode on a Pixel 6 Pro running Android 12.
Using Game Mode
With Game Mode enabled, open any game you have installed on your device, and you should see a small game control icon (Figure 2).
Figure 2
The Game Mode icon is found in Star Trek: Fleet Academy.
Tap that icon to reveal the Game Mode dashboard (Figure 3), where you can optimize Android for the particular game (if available), stream your gameplay to YouTube Live, check your FPS, and enable the screenshot shortcut.
Figure 3
The Game Dashboard makes it easy to control the options that are available to the game you are playing.
If the game developer has enabled the Optimization option, you can select from 3 modes of optimization:
- Performance: Maximizes the frame rate.
- Standard: Uses the game's defaults.
- Battery Saver: Optimizes for extended battery life.
Some games require a restart (of the app, not the device) if you go the optimization route.
Does Game Mode work on non-Pixel devices?
Although Game Mode is still only available to Pixel devices, there's been no confirmation as to whether or not it'll find its way to other devices. If you have a non-Pixel device and want to gain some of the benefits found in Game Mode, an XDA senior developer has created an app called Gaming Mode which can help boost the performance of your device specifically for games.
This app does the following:
- Auto Reject Incoming calls.
- Block notifications.
- Clear Background Apps to free up RAM.
- Game Booster to remove lag.
- Unlock the maximum FPS for your device.
- Disable auto-brightness.
- Change WiFi state.
- Change Ringtone and Media Volume.
- Create widgets for launching games from the home screen.
- Enable Auto Mode to automatically detect when you're playing a game (this is a premium feature).
- Whitelist apps from notification blocking.
- Whitelist apps so they aren't cleared from the background.
And that's all there is to Game Mode. If you're a serious mobile gamer, you owe it to yourself to try this feature. If you don't own a Pixel, give the Gaming Mode app a try and see if it doesn't help boost your device performance for the games you play.