Walk through the Android Settings tree, menu by menu
Eighteen top-level entries, more than six hundred rows, and a tree that runs six levels deep: Google's Settings app rewards patience. A simulator lets you wander it without touching your own phone, so you can find where a toggle actually lives, put version 14 next to 13, and retrace the same path again later.
At a glance
In the simulator, Android opens inside a phone frame and behaves the way the real Settings app does: rows sit in the same order, sub-screens open in the same place, and back takes you where you expect. The counts below come from the tree itself, so they move only when the tree does.
- 18top-level entries
- 663rows in total
- 6levels deep
- 2versions
| Device family | Phones |
|---|---|
| Frame shown | Phone |
| Versions | 14, 13 |
| Deepest path | 6 levels below the main list |
| Interface languages | 12, switchable while you browse |
| Account needed | No — it runs entirely in your browser |
How Android organises Settings
The top level reads like a list of concerns rather than a list of components. Network & internet, Connected devices, Apps and Notifications sit near the top because they are what people change most, and Battery, Storage, Sound & vibration and Display follow as the everyday dials. Further down the list turns protective, with Security, Privacy, Location and Safety & emergency clustered together, then Passwords, passkeys & autofill. System and About phone close things out, and the presence of Tips & support quietly admits that eighteen entries is a lot to hold in your head.
Depth is where the tree gets demanding. Six levels is enough for a single switch to sit four taps below the category that owns it, and the same subject can appear twice: Apps carries App battery usage while Battery keeps Battery usage, and Storage lists Apps again beside Images, Videos and Documents & other. Newcomers most often stall inside Network & internet, where Internet, SIMs, Hotspot & tethering, Data Saver and Adaptive connectivity share one screen. Against the flatter menus of an older phone, this layout trades quick scanning for somewhere to file everything.
Three settings worth finding
Settings > Network & internet > Adaptive connectivityA quiet switch that lets the phone drop between network modes on its own to save power. Most people never meet it because it hides one level below the network list, yet it explains battery behaviour that otherwise looks random.
Settings > Apps > Special app accessThe drawer where the unusual permissions live, the ones that are not part of the normal grant flow. If an app can draw over other apps or ignore battery limits, the answer is somewhere under here rather than in the per-app page.
Settings > Notifications > Notification historyA log of alerts that already scrolled away. Worth finding once, because the usual reaction to a missed banner is to assume it never arrived, and this page is the only place that keeps the record.
Versions of Android you can open
The simulator carries 2 builds of Android. Switching between them is the quickest way to see what actually moved: a row that changed name, a section split in two, a screen that quietly disappeared.
How this menu got here
Because Android is open source, the menu titles, their order and their nesting here are taken from the source rather than guessed at. Settings began as one long list and was reorganised over successive releases into named groups, with search layered on once the list outgrew a screen. Later versions lifted privacy and security controls out of the general pile and gave Safety & emergency its own entry. The two builds offered, 14 and 13, sit on either side of a round of grouping and naming changes, so comparing them shows what moved.
Who this is useful for
Support staff who need to say the exact taps out loud rather than approximate them. Teachers building a phone-literacy lesson without a class set of handsets. Anyone weighing a move from another platform who wants to see how much control is on offer before committing. Also useful for people helping a relative by phone, where naming a menu correctly on the first try saves ten minutes of confusion.
What is real and what is sample data
The structure is the real thing: menu names, their order, how they are grouped and what sits inside each one. That is why this article can quote a path such as Settings > Network & internet > Adaptive connectivity and expect it to match your phone.
The state cannot be. A device name, an address, a build number, a network name, a storage figure, whether a particular switch is on or off — those belong to a physical phone, not to a menu tree. Everywhere the simulator shows a value like that it is clearly-marked sample data: a placeholder that tells you where the number appears, not what any real device would say.
Try it yourself
The useful thing is to go looking for something specific. Pick a setting you would normally hunt for on a real phone, find it here, and record the path while you do it so you never have to find it twice. If you are weighing one system against another, put Android beside a second one and compare the same screen on both. The search will also work backwards: give it a setting name and it reports where every system files it.
Open Android in the simulatorFree, no account, works offline — 663 settings rows across 2 versions.Key points
- Android shows 18 top-level entries and 663 rows in total, nested up to 6 levels.
- The labels and their ordering are the system's own, not a tidied-up approximation.
- Anything that belongs to a specific device — names, addresses, build numbers, switch positions — is a marked sample.
Questions about Android settings
Does the simulator show your own phone settings?
No. The menu names, their order and their nesting come from the source and match a real device, but everything that belongs to a physical handset, such as a device name, a network name or a storage figure, is a clearly marked sample. Nothing is read from your phone and nothing you tap here changes it.
What is different between Android 14 and 13 here?
Both versions are available and you can switch between them without losing your place. The differences are mostly renamed entries, items that moved between groups, and rows added or retired. Loading one after the other is the quickest way to see which change belongs to which release instead of relying on memory.
Is there a way to share a path you found with someone else?
Yes. The step recorder captures the click-path you took through the menus, so it can be replayed or handed to another person as a sequence rather than as a written list of taps. That is handy when the destination sits several levels down and a text description would be ambiguous.