Fixing 6 One UI 7 Changes Driving Samsung Galaxy Users Crazy
Now that One UI 7 has finally rolled out to millions of Samsung users, many are finding some of the changes Samsung delivered to be less than ideal. Let’s go over some of the most complained about changes and find out if we have any fixes!
Power Button Assistant
It’s funny how the things you looked forward to end up being things that drive other users crazy. With One UI 7, the default action that takes place when users press and hold the power button is the triggering of Google’s Gemini Assistant. For users just trying to reboot or power down their phones, this could be very annoying. While it’s possible to do this by swiping down from the top right to reveal your quick settings and tapping the power icon in the top right, you can also make the power button be a power button again too.
Head into your settings and look for Advanced Features. From there, you’ll see Side Button and then the option to map that long press to Assistant, Bixby or to the power menu.
Split Notification Shade
Remember when the notification shade and quick settings weren’t separate screens? Me too. If, like me, you dislike this new change, I have good news. Swipe down from the right to access the quick settings, then look for the pen icon in the top right corner. Tap "Panel Settings" and change the option to "Together."
App Drawer Scroll Direction
After years of a horizontally scrolling app drawer the new vertical scrolling One UI 7 drawer might be enough to drive some of you crazy. To address this, enter the app drawer and tap the three dots in the search bar at the bottom. Tap sort and change to custom order. You’ll see that you’re now back to scrolling horizontally, but things are pretty messy. Tap those dots again and this time select Clean Up Pages and then Apply.
The big downside here is that the order will be custom and not alphabetical. You could take the time to order them yourself, but that’s pretty time consuming. Samsung really needs to give us a proper setting for this one.
Installing Good Lock and Modules
For the next changes we need a bit of help. Head to the Play Store and search for Good Lock. Inside this app, we can install several modules that can get us a bit closer to the old experience you might be looking for.
Z Fold Wasted Screen Space
Some Galaxy Z Fold users have reported that One UI 7 is causing their home screen layouts to squeeze in, wasting usable space on the edges of their screen. Users of the Cover Screen Mirroring option don’t seem to be affected, but users who want a different layout on the cover display vs inner display might be a bit annoyed.
To fix this we need the Home Up module in Good Lock. If you are unable to install this in Good Lock, try side loading the most recent version here. APK Mirror is a reputable source and I have installed apps through them for years without trouble.
Once Home Up is installed and opened inside Good Lock, look for Home Screen. The option we need is called DIY Screen. Toggle this on and head home. Once there, long press on your home screen and tap DIY Home in top right. Now, you can move your widgets anywhere you want - even the unusable edge of the screen. If widgets aren’t displaying their larger layout, trying long pressing home and resizing them until they do. Even if they’re too big, that’s fine because in DIY Home you can resize them again without losing the layout.
To see a video on this, check here.
Lock Screen Music Widget
Instead of the old larger widget that showed currently playing media on your lock screen, One UI 7 introduced the Now Bar. While it can do many of the same things at the bottom of your lock screen, the LockStar module can add the old widget back.
Head into Lock Star and tap LockStar at the bottom of the screen. You should be able to select Add Widgets and then add the widget for your media player of choice to your lock screen. It’s not quite what it used to be, but it’s better than nothing.
Lock Screen Notifications
By default, notifications only appear on the lock screen as small icons in the top left of the screen. To get back the larger glanceable notifications, head to settings and look for Notifications. Under Lock screen notifications, make sure the toggle is on and the style is set to Cards.