New phones come loaded with default settings chosen for the broadest possible audience, which means almost none of them are actually optimized for how you specifically use your device. Most people never revisit these defaults after the initial setup screens, which means they're carrying around settings that were never really chosen — just accepted by default because changing them wasn't an obvious next step.
Here's what's actually worth adjusting in the first few minutes after setting up a new phone.
**Turn off ad tracking and personalized advertising**
Both major mobile operating systems include settings that let advertisers track your activity across different apps to build a profile used for targeted ads. This is typically enabled by default. Turning off ad personalization (found under privacy settings on both iPhone and Android) doesn't stop you from seeing ads entirely, but it does stop apps from tracking your behavior across other apps to target you more precisely, which is a meaningful privacy improvement most people never bother to change.
**Review and limit app permissions immediately, rather than accepting requests blindly**
When you first install apps, they typically ask for permission to access things like your location, camera, contacts, or microphone. It's easy to tap "allow" without much thought just to get past the prompt and continue using the app. Taking a few minutes to go through your permission settings and specifically check which apps have access to your location (and whether they need constant access or only while actively using the app) often reveals permissions that were granted more broadly than necessary.
**Set up biometric security immediately, not eventually**
Face recognition or fingerprint unlock takes only a couple of minutes to set up, and skipping this step, even temporarily, leaves your phone protected by nothing beyond whatever screen lock you happened to set (or no lock at all, if you skipped through setup quickly). Since a lost or stolen phone with no meaningful lock screen protection is a genuinely serious problem, this is worth prioritizing before you start using the phone for anything else.
**Turn on automatic software updates**
Manually checking for and installing updates is easy to forget, and delayed updates mean your phone is running without the latest security patches for longer than necessary. Enabling automatic updates (available on both major platforms) means security fixes get applied without requiring you to remember to check periodically, which closes off vulnerabilities considerably faster than relying on manual updates.
**Adjust notification settings before apps start accumulating them**
It's much easier to set sensible notification preferences from the start than to go back later and untangle a build-up of notifications from dozens of apps you've since forgotten you even granted permission to. Going through and deciding, app by app, which ones genuinely need to interrupt you in real time versus which can stay silent, prevents the notification overload that tends to accumulate silently over months of accepting default settings.
**Set up your find-my-phone feature and test that it actually works**
Both major platforms include a feature that lets you locate, lock, or remotely wipe a lost or stolen device. This needs to be enabled before you lose the phone, obviously, so setting it up immediately rather than "getting to it eventually" is important. It's also worth actually testing that it works — logging into the associated account from another device and confirming you can see your phone's location — rather than just assuming it's configured correctly.
**Turn on two-factor authentication for your phone's primary account**
Your phone is typically tied to a central account (Apple ID or Google account) that controls backups, app purchases, and device recovery. Since this account is so central to your phone's overall security, setting up two-factor authentication on it specifically, right at the start, protects one of the most consequential accounts tied to your device.
**Review your default browser's privacy settings**
Default browser settings often favor convenience over privacy — accepting all cookies, allowing broad tracking, saving browsing history indefinitely. Taking a few minutes to adjust these settings toward more privacy-conscious defaults, rather than accepting whatever came pre-configured, is a small effort that pays off in reduced tracking and better control over your own data going forward.
**The bottom line**
New phone setup screens move fast and are designed to get you using the device quickly, which means a lot of meaningful privacy and security choices get skipped over by default rather than deliberately decided. Spending an extra fifteen or twenty minutes adjusting these specific settings right after setup, rather than months later after habits and default behavior have already settled in, meaningfully improves both your privacy and your security going forward.
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