With every new Samsung phone comes new software, which means more features to learn and figure out. That’s definitely true with the Galaxy S25 phones.
in this guide, we will show you some of the most useful tips tricks and features of the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
You’ll soon be able to bring your notifications and quick settings together, bypass charging to power the phone during gaming sessions and bring back the power button.
1. Group notifications and quick settings
In the latest version of One UI software, Samsung split the notifications and quick settings so that when you swipe down on the left side, you get notifications. When you swipe down on the right, it brings the quick settings down.
But if you want to join them together again, you can. Swipe down from the right to launch quick settings, now tap the little pencil in the top corner. Now choose ‘Panel Settings’ in the top left.
Tap the ‘together’ option, and it’ll bring them back to the same screen. So you can swipe from any part of the top edge to bring both down.
2. AI Select
AI select is a new tool for Samsung phones that effectively screen grabs a specific part of a screenshot and then attempts to offer up relevant actions based on what you’ve chosen.
If it’s a picture, it’ll offer up tools like drawing assist, or a generative edit. Or if it’s text, or an address, it’ll offer up Maps or writing assist features.
To use it, just drag across Samsung’s side panel from the right of the screen and choose AI Select. Now either draw around the object or text you want to use it on. Choose one of the AI options at the top, or just copy, pin or share it using the options below.
3. Open Now Briefing quickly
The Now Briefing is a new feature which shows weather, upcoming calendar appointments and Samsung Health information about your Energy Score and last night’s sleep in a handy full-screen view.
You can access it by tapping the briefing Now Bar at the bottom of your Lock Screen.
By default, it requires you to unlock your phone to view it. But you can switch this function off. Just open your Now Briefing and tap the settings cog at the bottom of the screen. Now on the next display toggle on the switch next to ‘Expand Now brief without unlocking’.
4. Turn Now Brief off
Let’s say you don’t find the Now Briefs all that useful. You can switch them off. Go to Settings > Lock Screen and AOD, then choose ‘Now Bar’. Toggle off the ‘Now Brief’ option, and it’ll no longer appear on your Lock Screen.
5. Change the size of app icons
In Samsung’s latest One UI, you can adjust the size of the app icons. You don’t get as much granular ability as some of the best Android phones, but you can choose between three sizes.
Long press on the Home Screen wallpaper and then tap the Settings cog in the bottom right. Right at the top of the next screen you’ll see an ‘App Size’ slider. Choose your preferred size between small, medium and large.
6. Create large folders
In One UI 7, you can create large folders on your Home Screen, so that you can launch apps right on the Home Screen instead of needing to open a folder first. To do so, create a folder as normal by dropping apps on top of each other.
Now, long press on the folder and you’ll see a popup menu appear. Choose ‘Enlarge’. Now it increases the size and allows you to open apps without needing to access the folder first, at least, for the first eight that appear.
If you want to shrink it down again, just long press it and tap ‘shrink’ from the popup menu.
7. Turn the phone off
Turning off the phone used to be as simple as pressing the side button. Now it’s effectively a shortcut key. By default you can switch off the phone by swiping down your quick settings, then tapping the little power button icon, this launches your power menu where you can choose to power off or restart.
8. Bring back the power button
The power button hasn’t been a power button by default for some time now, but you can make it one. Open Settings > Advanced Features then choose ‘Side Button’.
You’ll see either Double Press or Long Press. The latter is set to launch your Google Assistant by default. Tap this option and then choose ‘Power Menu’ from the next screen and now when you press and hold it, the power menu comes on screen and you can switch the phone off the old way.
9. Tag music quickly
One of my favourite things is to use the side button to launch Shazam and instantly recognise music. To do it, go to Settings > Advanced Features then ‘Side Button’.
Now in the Double Press options choose ‘Apps’ and pick ‘Shazam’ from the list. Now to make sure it auto-Shazam’s as soon as you launch it, open Shazam swipe across to the library and tap the settings cog in the corner. Toggle on the option that says ‘Shazam on app start.’
10. Quickly access missed notifications
Samsung phones save a record of all notifications that appear on your phone. It’s useful if you’ve dismissed one without reading it. To view the list just head to Settings > Notifications > Advanced Settings and then Notification History.
Now you’ll see all the notifications you’ve received on your phone. If you don’t want it keeping track, you can just toggle off the ‘Notification History’ button at the top of the menu.
11. Ensure your battery lasts as long as possible
There are lots of ways to make sure your battery lasts as long as it can. Both in terms of making sure the 100% charge lasts as long as it can, but also in terms of keeping the battery healthy for years.
To keep battery drain to a minimum, there are some staple features to try. For instance, by limiting your screen refresh rate and resolution. Head to Settings > Display, then Motion Smoothness and pick ‘Standard’. This will still adjust your refresh manually really low when necessary on static pages, but it will never go above 60Hz.
Also in the display settings menu, there’s Screen Resolution. Pick that, choose HD+ or FHD+ to reduce the number of pixels being powered on the screen. HD+ is pretty grainy, but uses the least battery. Choose FHD for balance.
Also, if you ensure your screen timeout time is short – by choosing Screen Timeout, and choosing something under a minute. That’ll ensure it’s not on, unnecessarily draining the battery. You can also toggle on the dark mode right at the top of the display settings menu to drop battery usage.
Now to ensure your battery is healthy for a long, long time, you can adjust its charging behaviour. Head to Settings > Battery and then choose Battery Protection. Now choose ‘Adaptive’ charging so that your phone will only charge up to 80% while you’re asleep, and then switch just before you wake up to finish off that last 20%.
12. Enable bypass charging
Bypass charging is a handy tip for anyone who plays long sessions of games but doesn’t want battery drain, or the phone constantly trickle charging and overheating, affecting performance. With it enabled it bypasses the battery and doesn’t charge the phone. It just uses a Power Delivery compatible charge to power the internal hardware direct.
So you need a 20W Power Delivery compatible charger, and your phone needs to be above 20%. If you’re sorted on those, open the Gaming Hub app, tap the three dots in the corner and choose the ‘Game Booster’ option. With a compatible charger plugged in and a battery level over 20% you should be able to toggle on the option that says ‘Pause USB charging when gaming’.
It’s worth noting that this only works with apps you’ve said are games within the Gaming Hub interface, so if you need to, make sure all your games are in there on the Home Screen of the Gaming Hub app.
13. Factory reset the whole phone
There might come a time when you want or need to completely wipe your phone, either to sell it or start over again from a blank slate. To do so, go to Settings > General Management. Tap ‘Reset’ then scroll to the bottom and select ‘Factory data reset’.
On the next screen, scroll down again and tap ‘reset’. You’ll probably be asked to confirm using your fingerprint scan or PIN number, and be asked to sign into your Samsung account to confirm that it is you. Once you’ve done all that, continue, and wait for the phone to wipe itself clean.
14. Back up to an external drive
Did you know you can back up your phone to an SSD or memory card, using the Samsung Smart Switch app?
To do so, open Smart Switch and tap the little memory card icon in the top corner. Plug in your external drive, and then tap ‘Back up to USB storage’. Wait for it to find your data, then on the next screen choose what you want to back up, hit ‘next’ and go through the process, and wait for it to finish.
Depending on how much stuff you have saved to your phone, it could take a while. To restore it to a new phone, you just go through the same process except instead of tapping ‘Back up to USB., you choose to restore from USB.
