Survey suggests this is the preferred first step when setting up an Android phone

We all have unique rituals when setting up a new Android phone. I go straight for the settings menu to adjust display timeouts, add my Private DNS settings, and activate Developer Settings for even more goodies. Only then do I install my favorite Android apps.

My colleague Mitja Rutnik tackles this challenge differently. He first targets the home screen of his Pixel, then focuses on targeted notification management to get ahead of the pings, and then tackles Modes to automate some of the important processes on his device. As I said, we all have different initial setup steps, so what’s yours?

To find out, we ran a poll on Mitja’s article, asking readers about their initial setup step. The results are now in, and you can view the data below.

We garnered just short of 3,000 votes across the six available options, but one stood out from the rest. Just under half of the respondents on this poll (49.9%) place “notification settings” as the top item on their phone setup checklists.

Heading into Settings > Notifications > App notifications and disabling pings from apps you simply don’t need alerting you is a wonderful start. However, you will need to do this every single time you install a new app, which is why I tackle notification management after I’ve loaded my initial apps onto my device.

Although Mitja targets the home screen environment first, even this step is geared toward notifications, given Niagara Launcher‘s notification bundling feature.

Speaking of launchers, installing a “third-party launcher” came in second with 23.9% of the vote. Given that the launcher is the lobby of your smartphone, it makes sense to address it first. Many respondents don’t see it as that important.

In a pretty lengthy comment, reader steviant explains that Lawnchair forms a core part of their setup process:

First thing I do is install lawnchair and turn off the pointless dock, I use the home screen as a kind of dock with all the icons I regularly use, and leave all the apps I don’t use in the self-organizing drawer.

There’s a broad array of launcher mentions, too. Reader pmlinux61 highlights Microsoft Launcher as their favorite option for their Pixel smartphone.

As for the remaining options, 8.6% of respondents target Quick Settings tiles, 7.8% target Modes, and 6.4% target App limits first.

What are your initial smartphone setup steps? Do you think managing notifications or picking a launcher is more important? Let us know in the comments section below.