These are the important tips and tricks and these help you to use your phone in a much convenient way.
- Side Key: This feature works as a shortcut key, where you double press the power button to perform an action. You can use this feature to launch camera app or any other app easily, without a long process.
To use this feature, just long press the power button for the Power Menu – Tap on Side Key Settings – Enable Double Press toggle and select Quick Launch Camera.
Alternatively, you can go to the Settings – Additional Settings – Side Key – Enable Double Press toggle and select Quick Launch Camera.
Now, if you double press the power button, your phone launches the Camera app.
- Dynamic Lock Screen Wallpaper: When your phone is locked and you wake it up to see the screen, you look at the lock-screen wallpapers. They keep changing every time you wake up your device. If you don’t want that, you can just disable this feature, and have a fixed lock-screen wallpaper.
To do that, go to Settings – Lock Screen – Disable Dynamic Lock Screen toggle.
Now, the lock-screen wallpaper will be fixed.
- Night Mode: When you enable this feature, it’ll put a dark theme in the phone, by turning everything dark including the stock applications. This will help your eyes strain less at night or even in general.
To enable this, go to Settings – Display – Enable Night Mode toggle.
Now everything will turn dark.
You can even schedule this to automatically be enabled and disabled at custom timings or sunrise and sunset.
- Palm Swipe to Capture: The traditional method to take a screenshot is to press volume button and power button simultaneously. But, if you want an easy way, you can enable this feature and then swipe on the screen with your palm to take a screenshot.
To enable this, go to Settings – Advanced Features – Motion and Gestures – Enable Palm Swipe to Capture toggle.
- Samsung Pay: Some Samsung phones comes with built-in payments app called Samsung Pay. It uses NFC to make payments, which lets you pay even without having to open and go through many options. This helps to make payments faster and easier.
It’s available as an app, and you can just add your debit/credit cards and start using it to pay.
- Make Apps Full Screen: Sometimes when there are black bars inside an app, and it’s not using up the whole screen, as the name suggests, this feature helps you make those apps full screen.
To enable this, go to Settings – Display – Full Screen Apps – From here, you can select which apps you want to go full screen, even if that app is not optimized for full screen.
- Hide the Notch: The notch at the top gives you space for more screen on the sides while housing a front camera. But, if you don’t like to see that notch, you can hide it with black bars around it and it’ll look like a normal screen without a notch.
To disable the notch, go to Settings – Display – Full Screen Apps – Tap on the three dots – Tap on Advanced settings – Enable ‘Hide Camera Cutout’ toggle.
Now, you won’t see the notch.
- Show Fingerprint Icon on Lock Screen: As this phone has an in-display fingerprint scanner, you have to know where you have to place your finger to unlock the phone. When the screen is locked, you won’t see the fingerprint icon, so it’ll be difficult to search for the scanner and unlock the phone.
Instead, you can just enable this toggle and when the phone is locked and the screen is off, whenever you tap on screen, it’ll show the fingerprint icon.
To enable this toggle, go to Settings – Biometrics and Security – Fingerprints – Enable the ‘Show icon when screen is off’ toggle.
Now, tap on screen when it’s locked, to see the fingerprint icon.
- Extra Shutter Button: In the camera application, you can tap on the shutter button to take a photo. Now, Samsung has a feature where you can pull out another shutter button and place it anywhere on the preview window. This let’s you take a picture easily, especially while taking selfies.
To use this feature, go to Camera application – Tap and hold on the shutter button and drag towards the top.
That’s it. You have an extra shutter button.
To put it back, just tap and hold on the second shutter button, drag and drop it on the primary shutter button, and it will disappear.
- Split Screen Mode: When you want to use two apps simultaneously, you can use them with this feature. Sometimes we might want to use two apps at the same time, maybe to take notes from a picture, because we can’t copy text from picture and there’s more than one paragraph to write. At times like this, split screen mode is amazingly helpful.
To use this feature, Open the desired applications – Tap on Recent Apps – Tap on the App Icon of the app – Tap on ‘Open in Split Screen View’. Now, that’ will open the current application in split screen mode at the top half of the screen.
Now you can select a second application from, either recent apps or tap on home button and select the application you want to use.
Now that second application will open on the bottom half of the screen.
In this way, you can use two apps simultaneously.
- Enable it for All Apps: Split screen mode is great for multitasking, but all apps might not be compatible with this feature. To enable this feature for all apps, there are few more steps you can take.
Go to Settings – About Phone – Software information – Tap on Build Number 7 times – Now Developer options are enabled.
Now go to Settings – Scroll down till the end – Tap on Developer Options – Scroll down – Tap on Force activities to be re-sizable.
Now, once you restart your phone, all apps will open in split screen mode.
- Pop Up View: This is similar to split screen mode, with a little bit of difference in the way the app will open. The app you select, will open in a pop-up window, which you can move around anywhere on the screen.
To use this feature, Open the desired applications – Tap on Recent Apps – Tap on the App Icon of the app – Tap on ‘Open in Pop-Up View’. Now, that’ will open the current application in pop-up window.
You can tap on the first option in that pop-up window, to change the transparency of that window.
Second option is for minimizing that windows into a chat-head.
Tap on it again, to open the window.
Third option is for maximizing that windows into its normal size.
Fourth option is for closing that application.
You can even change the size of that window, by tapping on the border of that window and changing the size.
- Navigation Gestures / Full Screen Gestures: The basic way to navigate through your phone is to use the Back, Home and Menu buttons that are available on the bottom of the screen. But if you want another way, you can enable navigation gestures, or as Samsung like to call it, Full Screen Gestures.
Once you enable this, navigation bar will be replaced with three lines.
You can swipe up from the right side, to go back.
Swipe up from the center, to go Home.
Swipe up and hold from the center, to trigger Google Assistant.
Swipe up from the left side, to open recent apps page.
Now swipe towards right side on the navigation gestures, to switch between current and previous apps.
Alternatively, you can enable or disable navigation bar from notification panel.
- Auto Call Recording: If you want to record all of your calls, incoming or outgoing, you can do that with this feature. Just enable it, and all of your calls will be recorded and saved on your phone.
Open Phone Dialler – Tap on the three dots on the corner of the screen – Tap on Settings – Tap on Recording Calls – Enable the toggle ‘Auto recording’.
- Default Apps: When you open a link that your friend sent, it might be opening in the stock browser, that is the phone’s browser, instead of Chrome. So, you can just change the default apps from stock browser to Chrome and then all links will directly open in Chrome. Default apps can be set for any apps including Phone dialler and messaging application.
To change default apps, go to Settings – Apps – Tap on Three dots on top corner – Tap on Default Apps – From here, you can change the default applications.
- Show Battery Percentage: If you want to see battery percentage beside the battery icon, you can enable this feature.
Go to Settings – Notifications – Status Bar – Enable toggle ‘Show battery percentage’.
- Swipe down for Notification Panel: When you’re on home screen, and you swipe down, it just opens the App drawer, just like it opens it when you swipe up.
So, to bring down notification panel when you swipe down, you can enable a toggle.
When you’re on the Home screen, do a pinch-in gesture – It’ll give you few options – Tap on Home Screen Settings – Enable the toggle ‘Swipe Down for Notification Panel’.
Now, when you swipe down on the home screen, it’ll bring down the notification panel.
- Re-Arrange Toggles in Notification Panel: When you open notifications panel, there are many shortcuts toggles/buttons that you can tap on to perform an action or open an application. But most of these might be useless to you, or you might want to re-arrange the buttons to put the most used first.
So, in order to do that, pull down notifications panel – Tap on three dots on top corner – Tap on ‘Button Order’ – Here you can change the order of the buttons/toggles according to your preference.
- Quick Settings in Notifications Panel: Once you pull down notifications panel, you can see toggles like Sound or Wi-Fi. To access extra settings, you normally long press on these toggles. But there’s a quicker way to access few settings related to those toggles.
Just tap on on the name below a toggle – And it’ll show a drop down menu with different options.
In this way, you can quickly put your phone in vibration or silent mode, or change your Wi-Fi network, directly from the notification panel.
- Maximum Power Saving Mode: If your battery is critically low and you can’t access charging points for few hours then turning on power saving mode can help you save battery.
Go to Settings – Device Care – Battery – Power Mode – Select ‘Maximum Power Saving’.
Once you do this, it’ll extend your battery life by many hours by reducing brightness, killing all the applications in the background, change the theme to dark, limit the CPU usage, and increase the standby time drastically.
After you enable this mode, you get access to only 8 applications. Four of them are fixed and you can choose the other four.
You can still use Wi-Fi and mobile data in this mode.
This is great especially in emergency situations.
Now, to turn this off, just tap on the three dots on top corner – Tap on ‘Turn off maximum power saving mode’.
Those are the tips and tricks of your Samsung phone. What do you think? If you have any suggestions or want to say something let us know in the comments below.
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