One UI 7 Hidden Features and Tips Worth Turning On

One UI 7 ships with several of its best features turned off or buried in submenus. We dug through the settings on a Galaxy S24 running One UI 7 and pulled the tips that actually change how the phone feels day to day. This covers the Now Bar, the lock screen fix everyone misses, custom charging limits, and a few well-hidden toggles.

#How Do I Fix the One UI 7 Lock Screen Notifications?

This is the change most One UI 7 users want first. Out of the box, the lock screen shows notifications only as tiny icons in the top corner, so you can’t glance down and see what you missed without tapping each one.

The fix takes 20 seconds. Open Settings > Notifications > Lock screen notifications, then under Notification style, tap Cards instead of Icons. Your lock screen now shows full notification cards with sender and preview text.

According to Android Police’s One UI 7 settings guide, this icon-only default is the single most polarizing change in the release. We flipped it back to Cards on the first day and never looked back. If your notifications still feel off afterward, our guide on fixing the Samsung keyboard has stopped issue covers a related input glitch some users hit after updating.

#What the Now Bar Can Actually Do

The Now Bar is One UI 7’s headline feature, similar in spirit to Apple’s Live Activities. It surfaces live information on your lock screen, like a running timer, workout progress, or active media, so you don’t have to unlock and open the app.

The best trick is hidden in plain sight. If music is playing with the phone locked, you can double-tap the play, pause, next, or previous controls right on the Now Bar without turning on the full screen. We tested this with Spotify on a Galaxy S24, and in our testing it worked straight from the Always On Display with the screen still dark.

According to Samsung’s official One UI 7 overview, the Now Bar is designed to bring real-time activities to the lock screen so you skip unlocking entirely for quick checks.

To control which apps appear, go to Settings > Lock screen and AOD > Now Bar and toggle individual apps on or off. If more than one activity is live, swipe up on the Now Bar from the lock screen to cycle between them. You can also enable it inside Always On Display mode for at-a-glance status without waking the phone.

#How Do I Set a Custom Charging Limit?

Battery protection got more flexible in One UI 7. Earlier versions let you pick adaptive charging or a fixed 80% cap, and that was it. Now you can choose a custom ceiling.

Go to Settings > Battery > Battery protection, choose Maximum, and set the limit to 80, 85, 90, or 95 percent. A higher cap gives you more usable battery while still reducing the long-term wear that comes from sitting at 100%. Pairing this with a quality cable helps too; our pick for the best USB-C cable for fast charging Samsung explains why.

This pairs well with general storage and battery housekeeping. If your phone is also running low on space, our guide on how to clear other storage on Samsung walks through reclaiming the hidden cache that builds up over time.

#The Split Gesture Change Everyone Notices

One UI 7 separated the notification shade and quick settings into two gestures. Swipe down from the top left for notifications, and from the top right for quick settings. It’s a real shift in muscle memory.

Not everyone likes it. If you’d rather have the old unified panel, swipe down from the top right, tap the pencil (Edit) icon, choose Panel settings, then Notification and quick settings view, and select Together. Tap back and Done. Now a single swipe from anywhere up top opens both at once.

There’s a tradeoff worth knowing. According to Android Authority’s One UI 7 walkthrough, the split design is faster once you adapt, since each gesture goes straight to what you want. Give it a few days before you switch back.

#The Hidden Toggles Worth Enabling

A few One UI 7 features are buried behind labs menus or long-press gestures. These are the ones we kept enabled after testing.

The Gallery search tab adds a dedicated Search button at the bottom of the Gallery, next to Albums and Stories. Open Gallery, tap Menu > Settings > About Gallery, then tap the version number repeatedly until “Gallery Labs enabled” appears. Go back to Settings > Gallery Labs and turn on Add search tab.

Lock screen mini widgets let you add up to two always-visible widgets. Long-press the lock screen, unlock, then tap Add widgets.

Vertical app drawer sorting finally lets you order apps alphabetically. Open the drawer, tap the three-dot menu, choose Sort, then Alphabetical order.

For deeper customization, Samsung’s Good Lock app adds modules like Home Up for gesture animation tuning. Samsung no longer bundles it, so grab it from the Play Store, where it’s now listed worldwide rather than locked to a handful of regions like it used to be.

#Customizing the Home Screen and Now Brief

One UI 7 folds in two features that used to need extra apps. Home Up is now built in, so you can place apps and widgets freely on the home screen without snapping to the old grid.

Now Brief is the other one. It gathers personalized updates through the day, like weather, your calendar, and reminders, and surfaces them on the Now Bar, a home screen widget, or the Edge panel. Tap into it from the Now Bar at the bottom of the lock screen to see your daily summary at a glance.

These two work well together once the lock screen and Now Bar tips above are in place, turning the home screen into something you actually arrange rather than accept.

#Bottom Line

Start with the lock screen Cards fix; it’s the change you’ll feel every time you pick up the phone. Then learn the Now Bar media double-tap and set a custom 85% charge limit to protect the battery long term. The Gallery search tab and vertical app drawer are quick wins once you know where they hide.

Moving to a new Samsung and want your data intact first? Our guide on backing up WhatsApp messages on Samsung devices covers that step. And if you ever spot the com.samsung.android.incallui process and wonder what’s running, we explain that too.

#Frequently Asked Questions