10 of the coolest features in Samsung's new One UI 9 update

10 of the coolest features in Samsung's new One UI 9 update

Your Samsung device has a lot of new tricks to explore.

Samsung One UI 9 recently started rolling out to more devices, and it gives everyone from the seasoned power user to the lock screen enthusiast something to be excited about. As with all system updates, some of the new tech you'll find under your Samsung device's hood is just plain fun. The One UI 9 kit added some neat background styling options for Favorites tiles and an AI-enhanced clock that blends into your lock screen photo.

But One UI 9 isn't just bling; there are quite a few useful new features you'll want to take for a spin. You just have to know what to look for.

1. More Quick Panel customizations

Yes, it's an enhanced control center. But given how many times your fingers go there every day, being able to make the space your own makes it more functional. One seemingly tiny detail of Samsung's Quick Panel overhaul makes this clear: dark mode is now a standalone button, separate from the display slider. For dark mode fans, this is a super useful way to override system settings with a single tap.

One UI 9 also makes reorganizing and sizing controls easier with granular vertical and horizontal resizing, which includes the media playback widget. Organizing shortcut widgets also became easier, as you can now drag and drop them into whatever order you want. To start customizing, tap the pencil icon at the top of the Quick Panel.

2. Camera improvements galore

Shoot in 24MP

Samsung added a mid-range 24MP resolution option for photos in One UI 9 when previously, we had to pick between 12MP and 50MP. 12MP can feel skimpy for photos that need to look good, while 50MP pics can eat up too much storage. So 24MP is a Goldilocks pixel density that should feel just right.

To enable this, install Good Lock if you haven't already, then search for and enable the Camera Assistant module within Good Lock. Then open Camera Assistant, access the Advanced Resolution Options and enable 24 MP resolution.

Turn your Samsung device into a webcam

Samsung phones have traditionally been great for shooting video, so you might have wished you could ditch your less-than-stellar laptop webcam for the higher-resolution phone camera. While this was possible before, it required clunky workarounds with extra apps and account logins. Now, you can achieve it with a direct USB connection.

After connecting your phone to your computer with a USB cable, pull down the notification shade and tap the USB for entry to change how your phone is connected. Choose Webcam, then you're ready to select your phone as a camera in your video calling app of choice.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is perfect for this because it balances on surfaces by itself. For non-folding phones, you'll likely need some kind of stand or clip.

Own TikTok with My Fan Cam

My Fan Cam is a new AI-powered feature that lets you resize a video's aspect ratio (its width and height proportions). This means if you shoot a video of your daughter's ballet troupe and want to focus on only her, you can zoom in on her and crop the rest of the video out, turning a 16x9 pageant into a 9x16 one-woman TikTok show.

For photos, the object eraser has also gotten smarter. Tap the pencil icon while viewing a photo to access the eraser, then your device can identify unwanted elements without you having to draw over them manually. This makes it easier to remove everyone but your daughter from the stage.

3. Gesture Wake-up and multi-finger gestures

If you need some info in a pinch and don't feel like saying "hi" to Bixby, Samsung has given you a quicker way to summon your AI assistant. The setting to enable is Gesture Wake-up: go to Settings > Advanced Features > Bixby to find it.

After toggling Gesture Wake-up on, all you have to do is lift your phone to your lips (an inch away will do; you don't have to kiss Bixby) and start talking. Bixby, who has gotten a lot chattier lately, should snap out of its slumber and respond.

One UI 9 also offers perhaps the most ornate swiping experience in modern mobile history with its new Multi-Finger Gesture library. Two fingers, three fingers, five fingers — you can use all these gestures to unlock up to five personalized actions. For example, you might set swiping left with two fingers to bring up your screenshots, while swiping right with four fingers splits your screen in two.

To use these, install the Home Up module inside Good Lock, then open it, select Multi-finger gesture and configure as desired. If there is such a thing as too much swiping, you will find that limit with this feature.

4. Live data speed monitoring

To understand why Samsung's latest status bar addition is so great, we only have to hark back to the old days of, say, One UI 7. Imagine you were at Bojangles and couldn't open up Engadget to read our review of the iPhone Duo. Is the problem your phone, the website, your mobile provider or something else? At your wit's end, you would have to fall back on a third-party speed test app to realize you were stuck because Bojangles' Wi-Fi was moving at dial-up speeds.

One UI 9's Live Data Speed monitor makes this assessment much easier by showing your real-time connection speeds (Wi-Fi and cellular) right in the status bar at the top of your screen. Enabling this feature is slightly cumbersome for how useful it is. As with many of the other tweaks here, you'll need the Good Lock app if you don't have it already. Inside that app, find and enable QuickStar, then look for Visibility of Indicator Icons and toggle it on. Network speed should now appear among your status bar options; activate it and you're set.

5. Better privacy controls

It's easy to grant apps permissions when you're not paying attention. But it's trickier to remove them, since doing so involves tapping through multiple menus. While One UI 9 doesn't fix this completely, it makes one common permission type easier to manage.

The new Privacy Indicator is a blue button that sits in your status bar and tells you which apps are currently sharing your location. Tap the pop-up to see what's tracking you, which gives you a shortcut to control its access if needed. This joins the green Samsung dot that lets you know your camera is in use.

Hopefully, Samsung's next feature drop will include even more privacy indicators, since our phones have many other ways to monitor us.

6. App multitasking tweaks

As Samsung device screens get bigger and bigger, especially with wide foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold8, you have more real estate for showing multiple apps at once. There are various ways for this to be useful, like checking your calendar while you're on the phone booking an appointment with your dentist. Or you can have fun instead of being productive, like playing Vampire Survivors while watching someone else play Vampire Survivors.

One UI 9 gives multitaskers the option to fit up to three apps onto their screens at once. So now, you can play Vampire Survivors while watching someone else play Vampire Survivors and follow an eBay auction at the same time. If that's not enough multitasking for you, One UI 10 will be here soon enough.

7. Searchable screenshots

Screenshot innovations aren't something you would expect from a major update, but you'll probably end up using these. Often, we amass screenshots of all kinds that just sit there in our images folder helter-skelter.

One UI 9's AI-fueled Gallery app turns the previously unwanted screenshot into something more by organizing them into useful, clickable categories like QR codes, receipts, boarding passes and similar. That means all those screenshots you've taken over the years have more utility and are easier to surface.

You can also search for screenshots just by typing keywords. To give it a spin, open the Gallery app, tap Albums, then choose Screenshots.

8. Game Booster while you game

About 84 percent of gamers play on their phones, with more than a third of those playing exclusively on mobile. This explains why Samsung, after updating its Mobile Gaming Hub, has made accessing its Game Booster controls easier in One UI 9. To make them appear, just swipe right from the left of the screen while you're playing.

While the tools themselves haven't changed, you can now call them up while you're playing instead of pausing your game to track them down in app settings. So if you want to ramp down performance to save battery life, the button is right there. The same goes for system CPU/GPU monitoring, screen sensitivity and recording and commenting while you're playing.

You can also block Bixby from interrupting your games with a weather or stock market announcement. To have a look, visit Gaming Hub > More > Game Booster.

9. Now nudge everywhere

Now nudge, Samsung's AI suggestion prompt engine, originally shipped at the beginning of the year with One UI 8.5. Its latest iteration in One UI 9 isn't much smarter, but you will find it in more places.

Until One UI 9, Now nudge communicated mostly while you were messaging. If you were chatting with a friend about dinner plans, it would prompt you to save the date in your calendar: tap the prompt, make a calendar item and you were all set without leaving the messaging app.

Now, those nudges aren't restricted to the keyboard. You'll find them in other places, like chat notifications and even as a floating button. To serve you those prompts, Samsung's AI butler needs access to heaps of your personal data. The more it knows, the better it can "nudge" you about details you would otherwise have to double-check yourself.

This is definitely neat, but it's also a potential privacy concern. To enable Now nudge, you need to turn on Personal Data Intelligence (Settings > Security and privacy > More privacy settings). Samsung clearly states that all data is processed on your phone "unless you consent to share it with Samsung or its partners for better recommendations." It's unclear, however, where and when you'd be giving your consent, so keep your eyes open. Samsung's Personal Data Engine has been running since One UI 7 and it's fueled by user data.

10. A revamped scanner

Samsung has had a fairly reliable scanner built into its cameras for years. With One UI 9, it received an AI boost.

The major improvement with the latest system update is a scanner that intuitively knows how to remove creases, folds and even curves from documents. The result is a much smoother scan, which is especially useful when you have a book with a spine and are scanning two pages at once.

Samsung's revamped scanner will also remove your thumbs — well, not your actual thumbs, but it will erase "thumb shadows" produced when you attempt to wrangle a book or crumpled document into submission on a flat surface. Use the Finger Eraser option for that.

The improved scanner also does a better job compensating for glare and moiré, an undulating pattern produced when black and white lines are slightly off-kilter. For scanner super-users, One UI 9 has even added a Home screen shortcut.