Save on your phone data

Before being confined to homeworking, I’d got into a bad habit of working on my laptop in cafés with patchy Wifi, tethering my iphone, going way over my data limit, then panic-buying add-ons.

The amount of data we eat up has exploded since Instagram introduced Stories, as we all accidentally stream videos on the go. While there’s no point in paying more than you need to for unlimited data, you also want to make sure you’re not running out at the end of every month.

Make sure your phone isn’t automatically gobbling data. On iphone, IOS13 enables you to switch on ‘data saver mode’ via mobile data settings. Also check you are not using ‘Wifi assist’ – which switches your phone to data when your Wifi connection is poor – if you don’t need it.

Examine all of the settings for your social media, whether you have Apple or Android. By default, Instagram preloads videos but you can adjust this by toggling on to ‘use less data’. Stop auto-playing videos on Facebook and Twitter and, if you like to watch Youtube or stream Spotify on the go, change the quality to ‘HD only’ or normal rather than automatic.

Also check that things like photos, documents or icloud are only downloading or backing up and your apps refreshing in the background when you are connected to Wifi. Every gigabyte helps.