Your Pixel phone is always scanning—disable these two settings to add hours of battery life

Published Aug 27, 2026, 10:15 AM EDT Joe Fedewa has been writing about technology for over a decade. Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem have been a focus for years, as well as reviewing devices, hosting podcasts, filming videos, and writing tutorials. Joe loves all things technology and is also an avid DIYer and food blogger. He has written thousands of articles, hundreds of tutorials, and dozens of reviews. Before joining How-To Geek, Joe worked at XDA-Developers as Managing Editor and covered news from the Google ecosystem. He got his start in the industry covering Windows Phone on a small blog, and later moved to Phandroid where he covered Android news, reviewed devices, wrote tutorials, created YouTube videos, and hosted a podcast. From smartphones to Bluetooth earbuds to Z-Wave switches, Joe is interested in all kinds of technology. After several years of jailbreaking and heavily modifying an iPod Touch, he moved on to his first smartphone, the HTC DROID Eris. He's been hooked ever since. Pixel phones are always doing a lot in the background. Some things are obvious—like weather apps grabbing your location—but others aren’t as upfront. Even worse is when seemingly simple features have a bigger impact on battery life than we know. That’s the case with two extremely basic features found on every smartphone: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Both are doing more than you might realize in the background, especially when you’re not actually using either one. Doing something about it improved battery life on my Pixel phone. Wi-Fi Scanning does more than you think Undeterred by an off switch Wi-Fi Scanning is one of those sneakily complex features. On the surface, it sounds pretty straightforward. Of course, you would want your phone to scan for Wi-Fi networks. How else will it know to connect when you get near one? In reality, it has nothing to do with connecting to Wi-Fi networks. That’s accomplished by simply keeping Wi-Fi turned on. Wi-Fi scanning, on the other hand, is constantly happening—even when Wi-Fi is turned off. The idea is that when your Pixel encounters a network, it uses the information for location services. Apps can use this to improve location accuracy without relying solely on GPS. However, since it runs in the background all the time, waking up sensors as it does, its impact on the battery can be significant. To turn off Wi-Fi Scanning, go to Settings > Location > Location services > Wi-Fi scanning. As I said, this doesn’t change your phone’s ability to find and connect to known networks. Keeping Wi-Fi itself toggled on doesn’t have as much of an impact on battery life. Bluetooth Scanning is more of the same Doesn’t care if Bluetooth is off Another way that Pixel phones can improve location accuracy without GPS is through Bluetooth Scanning. In a similar way to Wi-Fi Scanning, it uses nearby devices as a way to gather information about your location, and that can be passed on to apps. Bluetooth Scanning also runs in the background, whether Bluetooth is on or off. It has permission to wake up Bluetooth and other sensors as needed. Admittedly, Bluetooth isn’t as power-hungry as Wi-Fi. If you’re going to leave one of these scanning features enabled, Bluetooth Scanning is the one to choose. However, if you’re looking to save as much juice as possible, disabling both is the move. Go to Settings > Location > Location services > Bluetooth scanning. What do you lose with scanning disabled? Not nothing, but not as much as you might expect Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning work together to provide more accurate location data. As great as GPS is, it’s not as precise as you might think. In many cases, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to hyper-localization. If you decide the battery life savings outweigh location accuracy, you may find that you’ll have to grant location access to more apps. Alternatively, you can manually enter locations rather than letting apps find your location. However, GPS does the job for Google Maps and plenty of other apps you probably use every day. The truth is, for most people, turning these scanning features off won’t change their experience much, but it can significantly improve battery life. My colleague, Cory Gunther, has kept them disabled on his phone for years with no ill effects. Give it a try if your Pixel phone is consistently low on charge day after day.