Knowledge Base

There are a few quick and easy ways for you to track how much data you use.   1. Public Mobile My Account You can easily view your usage in your Public Mobile Self Serve account by clicking on the Plan and Add-Ons tab, then on Add-On Usage. Here, you will find a summary of your data usage for the current billing cycle.  You can also conveniently select Usage History for a daily, weekly or monthly summary view. Don’t have a Public Mobile My Account yet? No worries, you can register here. 2. Data Usage Notifications Public Mobile will notify you via text message when you're close to using all of the data included in your rate plan.  Data notifications indicate how much of your included plan data you have used, so you know when you’re approaching your limit. The default data notifications are set at 75%, 95% and 100% consumption of your data allotments. Find out more about data notifications on our Community!   3. Data Manager Applications Did you know? Most smartphones have a pre-installed data manager application which allows you to set cellular data usage notifications and data limit according to your Public Mobile expiry date?   For more information, please click on the link that corresponds with your handsets brand:   Apple Android Windows BlackBerry     > Select your device > Select Settings > Select Connections >Select monitor your wireless data usage   Can’t find a pre-installed data management app in your handset? Don’t worry, visit your mobile application store to find free data management applications:   Apple Android Windows BlackBerry @IWIK  "Data Witness" for Android - complete setup guide can be found here   Managing your data usage Now that you know how to track your data usage, we want to share some tips and tricks for managing features and applications.   1. Autoplay Many of the most commonly used applications like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & YouTube offer a neat feature called Autoplay. While using this app, the Autoplay feature will preload and play videos automatically in your “news” feed automatically as you progress through it.   While this is great for quickly watching videos, it can also consume a lot of data. (Did you know that watching a video over your mobile data varies from 0.21 Mbps (Megabytes per seconds) to 5.2 Mbps depending on its quality?)   If you’re finding that you’re going through your data really quickly or know that you’ve almost used your entire allotted amount, setting your Autoplay to work using Wi-Fi only or disabling it may be a good option for you. Learn how to below.   Facebook Visit the Facebook “Autoplay” help page for more details.   Instagram Visit the Instagram “Use Less Data” help page for more details.   Twitter Visit the Twitter “How can I stop videos from autoplaying” help page for more details.   YouTube Visit the YouTube “Turn-Off Autoplay” help page for more details.   2.GPS Navigation GPS navigation is another feature that in fact, does require high mobile data. As a substitute, you could use Google Maps, which is a free navigation application that offers the ability to navigate offline. You can also purchase other navigation applications that will allow you to navigate without using data and quickly change spending into an investment.   3.Google Map Visit the Google Map “Download areas and navigate offline” help page for more details.   Other Applications Other applications like video games, weather, music streaming can consume a lot of data. The good news is that most smartphones will give you the ability to restrict background data for each application that you use on a daily basis. We invite you to visit your handset manufacturer website for more details.   You now have the tools to take control of your data usage. Have other questions? Be sure to check out our Community. It’s the place to get help, give help and share ideas!   -Public Mobile Community team