Data saver
Every row on the Data saver screen: what arms it, and the three answers each network feature can have while the connection is metered.
The Data saver screen is three groups: what turns data saving on, the fetches the keyboard makes on its own, and the ones you start yourself. The last two only appear once something has turned data saving on. With Save data now off and Turn on by itself left at Only when I turn it on, the screen shows just the first group. This page is the field reference. For what it’s for and how the ask-first answer behaves in practice, start at Data saver.
Every row in the last two groups is a choice, not a switch. The full set of answers is Allow, Ask each time and Turn off. The middle one is missing from the “Fetched on its own” group, because those happen with no panel on screen and nobody there to answer.
Options
Section titled “Options”When to save data
Section titled “When to save data”| Setting | Control | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Save data now | Toggle | Off |
| Turn on by itself | Choice of 5 | Only when I turn it on |
Save data now holds on any connection, Wi-Fi included, until you turn it off. It’s the answer to a network Android thinks is free and you know isn’t, such as a phone hotspot.
Turn on by itself is one of: Only when I turn it on, On mobile data or a metered network, Only while roaming, Android’s Data Saver is on, or Any of these. Roaming is the strictest: it needs the connection to be metered and roaming, so a roaming-flagged Wi-Fi bridge that costs nothing doesn’t fire it.
Fetched on its own
Section titled “Fetched on its own”| Setting | Control | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Link previews | Allow / Turn off | Turn off |
| Word look-ups | Allow / Turn off | Turn off |
| Photo backgrounds | Allow / Turn off | Turn off |
| Weather chip | Allow / Turn off | Turn off |
| Exchange rates | Allow / Turn off | Allow |
| Add-on updates | Allow / Turn off | Turn off |
These are applied by hiding the matching setting while data saving is in force, so the feature’s own screen still shows what you chose and gets it back the moment you’re on Wi-Fi. Link previews covers both the clipboard and the QR scanner in one row. Photo backgrounds clears the Use mobile data switch in a theme’s Online photos group, so one answer reaches both the rotation and the pool top-up. Exchange rates is the one allowed by default: a few hundred bytes, cached for hours, and a converter showing last week’s rate is worse than the fetch.
Started by you
Section titled “Started by you”| Setting | Control | Default |
|---|---|---|
| GIFs and stickers | Allow / Ask each time / Turn off | Allow |
| Web and image search | Allow / Ask each time / Turn off | Allow |
| Animated emoji | Allow / Ask each time / Turn off | Ask each time |
| Downloads | Allow / Ask each time / Turn off | Ask each time |
| Cloud AI | Allow / Ask each time / Turn off | Allow |
At Ask each time, the panel says why it’s empty and carries a Use mobile data button. Tapping it allows that one feature until the network changes or the keyboard restarts. At Turn off, nothing is offered.
GIFs and stickers never touches your own sticker packs, which are files on the phone. Web and image search is one answer for both, since someone who doesn’t want search on mobile data doesn’t want half of it either. Animated emoji holds the looping preview in the long-press popup, and treats pressing Send as the yes. Downloads covers language data, dictionaries, emoji keyword packs, add-ons and the on-device speech and language models, and it’s where the old Ask before downloading on mobile data and Only download over Wi-Fi switches went. Cloud AI never holds an on-device model, which costs nothing to reach.
Details & edge cases
Section titled “Details & edge cases”- Any row you’ve changed grows a restore button. Same as everywhere else in Settings; see Putting one setting back.
- The keyboard and the settings app ask separately. A yes given to a panel doesn’t carry into a download you start from a settings screen, and the other way round.
- Model downloads keep their size thresholds. With Downloads set to Allow, a Whisper model at about 150 MB or an on-device AI model at about 500 MB still confirms on a metered connection. That prompt is older than this screen and independent of it.
- Add-ons keep a switch of their own. Only on Wi-Fi, on the Add-ons screen, is separate from the Add-on updates row here. Either one holding is enough to skip the automatic refresh a visit would make.
- Nothing here is a permission. Data saving decides whether a fetch is worth its bytes, not whether the feature is allowed to exist. Turning a tool off entirely is WM KeyboardTools.