Samsung's One UI interface has matured over the years and its latest version includes: Lots of customization options You'll never get bored of it. One important feature is app shortcuts on the lock screen. This makes it easy to open a specific app directly and saves you from having to tap multiple times on the screen. One UI 3 has a lot of features. That lets you customize your phone to your liking. One UI 4 also introduced more ways to customize themes and clock styles, and change lock screen shortcuts—the ones you see at the bottom of the screen. Here's how to change lock screen shortcuts from the default shortcuts on Samsung Galaxy Phones.
What are lock screen shortcuts?
When you turn on your smartphone's screen, the lock screen displays basic details like the date and time, notifications, signal strength, battery life percentage, etc. A recent interface change has introduced two app icons that appear as shortcuts in the bottom corners. As much as we'd like to avoid them, we can't deny that they're reminiscent of the ones on the iPhone's lock screen.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the shortcut on the left is to access the dialer and on the right is to open the camera app.
But if you don't use them often, you're in luck. Samsung's One UI lets you change these shortcuts and add more than two to your phone's lock screen. You can place your favorite and frequently used apps on the home screen for quick access.
How to change lock screen shortcuts
The new One UI offers some native settings for modifying lock screen shortcuts. This will help if you just want to replace them. However, you can get help from Samsung's Good Lock app to further customize your phone's lock screen. First, let's check out how to change lock screen shortcuts using the native options.
Customize using default options
Step 1: Open the Settings app on your Samsung Galaxy smartphone and go to the Lock screen section.
Step 2: Scroll down to the Shortcuts option. Make sure the toggle is enabled.
Step 3: Tap the Shortcuts option to change the preset shortcuts for the left and right corners on the lock screen.
Step 4: Select the left shortcut and choose the app you want to launch when you swipe left on the lock screen. You can choose to launch a third-party app or a shortcut like Torch, Do Not Disturb, Calculator, etc.
Step 5: Similarly, select the right shortcut and choose what you want to open when you swipe from the right.
This will successfully install the new lock screen shortcuts on your Samsung Galaxy phone. You can always use the Good Lock app to add more shortcuts to your phone's lock screen. Here's how.
Customization with Good Lock
Step 1: Get and install the Good Lock app on your Galaxy smartphone.
Step 2: Open the app and tap the Install button next to LockStar to install the module from the Galaxy Store.
Step 4: Enable the toggle at the top to turn on the unit.
Step 5: Select the lock screen image on the left side to make edits to it.
Step 6: You'll see the entire lock screen layout appear with all the different elements like the clock, widgets, notifications, music controls and of course shortcuts.
Step 7: Tap one of the shortcuts at the bottom and you'll see a rectangular outline around the area.
Step 8: If you want to get rid of the lock screen shortcuts completely, you can tap the small “x” icon in the top right corner of the rectangular outline.
Step 9: To customize shortcuts, select the small edit button in the lower left corner of the outline.
Step 10: You'll now see two options. The selected shape will be the current layout with two shortcuts. The other option has six different shortcuts you can assign. Select this option.
Step 11: After selecting the options, you can choose the alignment of the lock screen shortcuts. Try all the options and choose the one that best suits your requirements.
Step 12: After selecting the desired layout, click the first “+” button inside the shortcuts drawer to add a shortcut.
Step 13: Select the app you want for the first shortcut. You can see it added at the top.
Step 14: Continue selecting other apps you want to add as shortcuts until you've selected all of them. Then, tap "Apply" in the upper-left corner of the screen.
Step 15: Now, click Save in the top left corner to apply all changes.
That's it. Now lock your phone. Instead of two separate buttons, you'll get a single trigger-like button to open shortcuts. Here's what it looks like.
Step 1: Tap the small icon in the bottom left corner to show all your shortcuts.
Step 2: Select the person you want to release.
If you want to customize the shortcuts, use the Good Lock app and repeat the process.
Customize your snapshot screen and make it more functional.
The lock screen on Galaxy phones can be a powerful asset, depending on how it's equipped with relevant options. Adding more shortcuts to your lock screen can help you get things done faster directly from the lock screen. Hopefully, the steps above are sufficient to teach you how to change lock screen shortcuts on Samsung Galaxy phones.
