12 Hidden TRICKS for Your Samsung Phone!
One UI 8.5 hidden tricks make Samsung phones feel way more flexible than they look at first glance. The biggest changes I’d actually use are the deeper quick settings customization, partial screen recording, smarter camera tools, and a few Good Lock modules that are still wildly underrated. If your Samsung phone is running One UI 8.5, these are the features I’d check first.
QuickStar turns the quick settings panel into something completely custom
The default quick settings panel on my Galaxy S26 Ultra is absolutely fine, but One UI 8.5 gives you way more control than it first appears. With the QuickStar module inside Good Lock, I can enable advanced settings like show bar levels and resize panel owners, then rebuild the panel around the controls I actually use.
The big change is layout freedom. I can make the brightness slider and volume slider vertical, shrink the media player widget, move everything around to save vertical space, and remove the toggles I never touch. My favorite part is that I can pull a button, like the torch toggle, out of the button box entirely and turn it into its own isolated control that can be resized.
One UI 8.5 also lets me add custom images to individual quick settings elements. I applied image backgrounds to the brightness panel, volume panel, media panel, and button box panel, and the end result honestly looks really, really cool.
Lock screen customization is smarter, especially with dynamic clocks
One UI 8.5 improves lock screen customization in a few useful ways. After choosing a wallpaper from the new wallpaper selector, the clock automatically moves into a more optimal position, and the dynamic clock option can reshape itself around foreground elements in the wallpaper.
That dynamic clock feature existed in One UI 8, but it only worked with people or pets. In One UI 8.5, it works on almost everything else as well, which makes the lock screen feel much more intentional without needing much effort.
You can also expand lock screen wallpapers beyond what the original image allows, lower the wallpaper, and reposition the clock for a cleaner layout. There is also a new weather icon that can play weather-related animations on the lock screen whenever it is raining or snowing in your area.
LockStar adds manual always-on-display brightness
If you have the LockStar module installed through Good Lock, One UI 8.5 adds a new AOD auto brightness option. Turning auto brightness off lets you manually control the brightness of the always-on-display, so you can make it brighter during the day or dimmer at night.
LockStar also includes a new unlock animation tweak, but I prefer leaving that disabled. It is there if you want to play around with it, but it does not produce the smoothest end result.
NavStar lets you replace the back gesture icon with almost anything
NavStar now lets you customize the side back gesture icon. Samsung includes a bunch of built-in icons, including clean minimal arrows and more obvious options like a burger icon, but you can also choose downloaded stickers or literally any image from your gallery.
Using something silly like a rainbow cake is pretty hilarious, but the more useful idea is using a custom PNG back-style image. If you are intentional with the image, you could make the back gesture look genuinely clean and personal.
Partial screen recording is one of the best new One UI 8.5 tools
Partial screen recording is a really cool feature introduced with One UI 8.5. From the screen recorder toggle in quick settings, the updated interface now includes an option to create a partial screen recording instead of recording the full display.
Once partial recording is selected, you can move the recording box wherever you like, adjust the corner handles to dial in the exact area, and then hit record. It is simple, but it solves a very specific problem for anyone who only wants to capture one part of the screen.
AI Select is faster because the edge panel handle does more
AI Select also gets a small but very useful gesture change. In previous versions of One UI, I had to swipe in the edge panel and then tap AI Select. In One UI 8.5, I can long press the edge panel handle and activate AI Select straight away.
From there, I can circle whatever I want and use the feature as normal. It is not a huge visual change, but it makes AI Select feel much quicker to access.
Camera Assistant unlocks 24MP mode on the S26 series
For now, this camera trick is for Samsung’s newest lineup of devices, the S26 series. Inside the camera app, you can open the settings menu, scroll to Camera Assistant, and enable 24 megapixel resolution.
The important extra toggle is keep 24 megapixel resolution. Once that is enabled, you can switch from 12 megapixels to 24 megapixels in the camera app, and the setting will stay that way indefinitely unless you manually change it later.
Pro Video mode can finally hide the messy camera controls
Pro Video mode has a bunch of additional features worth exploring, but One UI 8.5 adds one small toggle I really like. It hides the chaos that can make the camera interface look messy and somewhat convoluted, leaving just the lens modes and the record button.
That makes Pro Video feel less visually overwhelming when you do not need every control on screen at once.
Samsung’s document scanner now creates cleaner multi-page PDFs
Samsung has always been one of the best OEMs for an inbuilt document scanner, and One UI 8.5 makes it even better. When you point the camera at a document, the app shows a floating bounding box and asks if you want to scan it.
The scan can turn into a high-fidelity document within seconds, and it can use AI to remove fingers and corner folds. In my test scan, it completely removed the creasing from the paper and even my finger from the bottom.
The best part is the add scan button. You can keep adding additional pages into one document file, and once you are done scanning, Samsung saves the whole thing as a single combined PDF.
Gallery Assistant is the underrated batch-editing module to install
Gallery Assistant is a relatively new Good Lock module, and it is honestly such an underrated tool. Once installed, you can select multiple images and videos in the default Samsung Gallery app, open the more menu, and choose edit with Gallery Assistant.
That sends everything straight into Gallery Assistant, where you can batch edit selected photos in one go. Even simple tools like rotate and flip are seriously useful when you want to straighten or rotate a large number of photos at once.
almost none of these options here are gimmicks.
— Sam BeckmanAuto Blocker can stop APK installs, but power users can turn it off
If you rely on sideloading third-party APKs that are not downloaded from the Google Play Store, One UI 8.5 can feel even more restrictive than past One UI versions. When you try to install a downloaded APK, you may see an unknown app blocked pop-up that prevents the install entirely.
The workaround is in Settings under Security and privacy. Open Auto Blocker, toggle it off, enter biometrics, and APK installs work again.
There is also an extra option that turns Auto Blocker back on after 30 minutes for extra security. If you are a power user, you are aware of the risk, and you are comfortable with doing so, you can disable that automatic re-enable behavior too.
Device Care can block apps that send excessive ad notifications
One of the best and most underrated new One UI 8.5 features targets invasive apps that show way too many ads. In Settings, open Device care, tap the three-dot menu, go into settings, and enable the intelligent blocking toggle at the top.
Once enabled, One UI starts analyzing the apps you use. If it detects that an app is sending too many ad-based notifications, those notifications get blocked.
The 12 One UI 8.5 tricks I’d check first
- Customize quick settings with QuickStar layouts and resized controls.
- Add image backgrounds to quick settings panels.
- Use dynamic lock screen clocks around more wallpaper subjects.
- Expand and reposition lock screen wallpapers.
- Manually control always-on-display brightness in LockStar.
- Replace the back gesture icon through NavStar.
- Record only part of the screen.
- Long press the edge panel handle for AI Select.
- Enable 24MP camera mode on the S26 series.
- Hide clutter in Pro Video mode.
- Use the improved document scanner for multi-page PDFs.
- Batch edit photos and videos with Gallery Assistant.
From Sam Beckman
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