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Huawei

Guides for Huawei Nova

471 guides

Network & Connectivity

Turn Wi-Fi On or Off

If your phone keeps burning through mobile data at home or at work, Wi-Fi might be switched off without you noticing. On the other hand, a Wi-Fi radio left running all day in areas with no network drains battery for nothing. Knowing exactly where this switch sits on your Huawei saves both your data plan and your battery.

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Language & Input

Resize the On-Screen Keyboard

If the SwiftKey keyboard on your Huawei phone feels too large for one-handed typing or too cramped to hit the right keys, the default layout is likely still active. Height, width and position of the keyboard can all be adjusted independently of each other. This becomes noticeable especially on larger displays or when you switch between portrait and landscape typing.

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Photo, Video & Media

Fingerprint Sensor as Camera Shutter

Taking selfies or group shots on a Huawei phone often means stretching a thumb across the screen for the shutter button while the frame shifts. The fingerprint sensor can act as that trigger instead, but the switch for it lives inside a security menu, not the camera app, so most people never find it.

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Network & Connectivity

Show WiFi Password as QR Code

Typing out a long WiFi password for a visiting friend gets annoying fast, especially with mixed-case letters and symbols. Your Huawei phone can turn the password of a network you are already connected to into a scannable QR code instead.

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Calls & Messages

Show Alternate Calendars in the Calendar App

If your Calendar app only shows Gregorian dates, religious or cultural holidays like Islamic, Hebrew, or Chinese Lunar dates stay invisible next to your regular entries. EMUI hides this option inside the Calendar settings by default, so most users never notice it exists. Adding an alternate calendar shows a second date line under each day without replacing your main calendar.

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Network & Connectivity

Turn Location Access On or Off

If your Huawei phone keeps showing the location icon in the status bar even though you are not navigating or checking in anywhere, general location access is probably switched on for every app at once. This master switch overrides individual app permissions, so weather, maps, and social apps all lose GPS access the moment you turn it off. It is a different setting from disabling location for a single app.

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Storage & Backup

Set Memory Card as Preferred Storage

If your Huawei phone still saves photos and videos to internal memory even with an SD card inserted, the camera is not set to prioritize the card. This mostly happens after a factory reset or when a new memory card is inserted for the first time. Burst shots and some background tasks can keep landing on internal storage even after the change.

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Battery & Power

Power Saving Mode: Enable or Disable

If your Huawei phone suddenly delays downloads or holds back new emails, Power Saving mode is probably running in the background. It throttles background activity on purpose to stretch battery life until you can recharge, which can make notifications and app updates feel slower than usual.

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Network & Connectivity

Enable or Disable Background Data and Roaming for Apps

If a messenger like WhatsApp only shows new messages after you open the app, or your data bill spikes right after a trip, background data and roaming permissions for that app are usually the reason. EMUI lets you allow or block both separately for every installed app, so getting the setting wrong means either late notifications or an unexpected roaming charge.

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Security & Privacy

Show Step Count on Lock Screen

If the step counter your Huawei phone tracks with its built-in pedometer never shows up on the lock screen, the Magazine lock screen style is probably not active. Without it, the Show step count toggle in your settings has no visible effect, so the number stays hidden even though tracking runs in the background.

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Calls & Messages

Forward an SMS Message

If you want to pass on a text you received without retyping it, EMUI hides the forward option inside the message menu rather than as a visible button. This is why many Huawei users only send screenshots instead of the actual message.

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Notifications & Focus

Enable or Disable Dial Pad Sounds

Every tap on the Huawei dialer can trigger a beep or tone, and that gets annoying fast if you dial numbers in a quiet room or share the phone with someone who hates the noise. The keypad tones setting controls whether you hear anything at all and which tone plays. Switching between None, Default and Melody changes how the phone reacts to every digit you press.

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Network & Connectivity

Set Up a VPN Connection

Public Wi-Fi hotspots and open mobile networks let anyone nearby read your unencrypted traffic. On a Huawei phone the built-in VPN client stays empty until a server profile is added, so the connection option does nothing on its own. Once a valid server address, protocol and login details are entered, the phone tunnels your data, hides your IP and reaches sites that would otherwise be blocked.

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Notifications & Focus

Assign a Custom Ringtone to a Contact

If every call sounds the same, you always have to glance at the screen to see who is calling. Assigning a personal ringtone to a specific contact lets you recognize important callers by sound alone, even with the phone in your pocket or across the room.

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System & Settings

Change System Navigation Type

If the on-screen buttons at the bottom of your Huawei phone feel cramped, or you keep hitting the back button by accident, the navigation style is worth changing. Huawei phones default to Three-key navigation, but Gestures and the floating NaviDot are also available. Picking the wrong option can interfere with accessibility shortcuts tied to the navigation bar.

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Notifications & Focus

Lock Screen Notifications: Show or Hide

Anyone who picks up your Huawei phone can read message previews straight off the lock screen if notifications are set to show full content. That becomes a problem on shared desks, in meetings, or whenever you hand the phone to someone else for a moment. Huawei lets you keep alerts visible while hiding the actual text, or turn lock screen notifications off entirely.

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Network & Connectivity

Reset Network Settings

If WLAN keeps dropping, mobile data refuses to reconnect after switching networks, or Bluetooth pairings act up for no clear reason, a stuck network configuration is usually behind it. Resetting network settings wipes WLAN profiles, mobile data setups and Bluetooth pairings so the phone rebuilds them from scratch. On Dual SIM phones you also get to pick which SIM card the reset applies to.

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Network & Connectivity

Set Up Private DNS

On public or shared Wi-Fi, every domain your phone looks up travels as plain text, letting the network operator or anyone else on the connection see which sites you visit. Huawei phones ship with private DNS switched off by default, so this exposure continues until you activate an encrypted resolver. Turning it on requires the exact hostname of a DNS provider, not just an IP address.

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Notifications & Focus

Turn Outgoing Message Sound On or Off

Every message you send from a Huawei phone plays a short confirmation tone by default. In quiet environments or during calls, that sound can feel out of place. The setting controlling it sits inside the Messages app itself, not in the general sound settings, which is why many people can't find it right away.

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Notifications & Focus

Turn Alarm On or Off

If your alarm doesn't ring in the morning, chances are the switch got flipped off by accident, not the alarm itself getting deleted. Huawei phones keep every alarm you set stored in the Clock app, so you never have to rebuild the same wake-up time from scratch. Knowing exactly where that switch sits saves you from re-entering the time, label, and repeat days over and over.

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Other

Quick Prediction Insert: Enable or Disable

If Huawei's SwiftKey keyboard inserts a suggested word the moment you tap the space bar, quick prediction insert is active. This happens before you finish typing the word yourself, which can break sentences you did not mean to autocomplete. The feature only works when autocorrect is turned on.

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Battery & Power

Show Battery Percentage

If your status bar only shows a plain battery icon with no numbers, you are left guessing how much charge your Huawei phone has left. EMUI hides the exact battery percentage by default and only displays a rough fill level. Turning this option on replaces the guesswork with a precise readout right in the status bar.

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Network & Connectivity

Enable or Disable Auto-Download Updates over WiFi

If your Huawei phone keeps grabbing software updates the moment it connects to WiFi, storage fills up before you even decide to install anything. On the other hand, if updates never seem to download on their own, this WiFi-only auto-download setting is usually the reason. Either way, the update only gets fetched, not installed, until you confirm it.

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Security & Privacy

Manage Device Administrators

If an app refuses to uninstall or keeps triggering warnings about admin rights, it likely still holds device administrator status on your Huawei phone. Device administrator permissions let an app change system settings, lock the screen or wipe stored data - access many apps request without a clear explanation. Turning off the wrong administrator can break features like Find My Phone or a company profile, so you need to know exactly which app is authorized before switching anything off.

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