Android Beyond the Obvious

Put your everyday controls in the first row

When you swipe down once, the Quick Settings panel shows only its first few tiles. If the flashlight, hotspot or screen recorder lives on page two, you pay an extra swipe every time. Reordering takes a minute.

1. Swipe down from the top of the screen twice to open the full panel.
2. Tap the pencil (Edit) icon. On Samsung One UI, tap the three-dot menu, then Edit buttons.
3. Touch and hold a tile and drag it into the top positions. Tiles moved to the lower area are hidden, not deleted.
4. Tap the back arrow to save your layout.

Undo it: return to edit mode and drag tiles back. On Pixel phones, Reset restores the default layout.

Reread a notification you dismissed too fast

Swiped away a delivery code before reading it? Notification history keeps a record of recent alerts, but only from the moment you turn it on, so it is worth enabling now.

1. Open Settings > Notifications > Notification history. On Samsung, look under Settings > Notifications > Advanced settings.
2. Turn on Use notification history.
3. Later, scroll to the bottom of the notification shade and tap History to see the last 24 hours.

Undo it: switch the same toggle off and the phone stops recording.

Share Wi-Fi without reading out the password

1. Open Settings > Network & internet > Internet (Samsung: Settings > Connections > Wi-Fi).
2. Tap the gear beside the network you are connected to.
3. Tap Share or QR code and confirm with your screen lock.
4. Your guest scans the code with their camera app and joins.

Undo it: nothing changes on your phone. If you shared with someone you no longer want online, change the password on your router.

Launch the camera and actions with gestures

On Pixel phones, open Settings > System > Gestures. Quickly open camera lets a double press of the power button launch the camera from any screen. Quick Tap, on supported Pixel models running Android 12 or later, runs an action such as a screenshot when you double-tap the back of the phone. On Samsung, the equivalent double-press option sits in Settings > Advanced features > Side button.

Undo it: switch each gesture off in the same menu.

Lend your phone with app pinning

Pinning keeps one app on screen, so a friend looking at your photos cannot wander into your messages.

1. Search Settings for App pinning (Samsung calls it Pin windows) and turn it on, along with the option to ask for your PIN before unpinning.
2. Open the Overview screen, tap the app icon at the top of the card and choose Pin.
3. To unpin with gesture navigation, swipe up and hold. With three buttons, press and hold Back and Overview together.

Undo it: turn the App pinning toggle off.

Shorten animations, carefully

Halving animation speed makes a phone feel snappier without changing its real performance. The setting lives in Developer options, a menu meant for app makers, so change only what is listed here.

1. Go to Settings > About phone (Samsung: add Software information) and tap Build number seven times. Enter your PIN.
2. Open Settings > System > Developer options.
3. Set Window animation scale, Transition animation scale and Animator duration scale to 0.5x.

Undo it: set all three back to 1x, then switch off Use developer options at the top of the menu.

Where the menus live on two popular skins