Samsung Good Lock: The best tips for your Samsung Galaxy smartphone

Samsung's OneUI user interface has never been known for its extremely deep customization options. However, many do not know that it is secretly probably the most customizable UI. We want to show you an example: Samsung Good Lock.

The whole thing is because the options were not hidden in the settings, but in official, external, unjustifiably unknown plugins. In this post we want to present these to you, mainly Good Lock. Important: The required software version is OneUI 2.5.

Samsung GoodLock

The main app of all the plugins is of course Good Lock. It offers the vast majority of options and also shows you which other plugins are also available. Everyone should start here. To download Good Lock, go to the Galaxy Store and search for it. The reason for this is that the creator of the app is strangely not Samsung, but "Good Lock Labs".

If you open Good Lock, it is right at the front: Redesign your Galaxy. In the first area we see eight individual plugins, from the lock screen to the multi-tasking menu you can really change everything. If you go to the right on the lower bar, you can see other plugins that actually work the same in principle, but were somehow sorted differently. Not very understandable, but we'll get to that later.

Picture: TechnikNews

Lock Star - Personalize your LockScreen

Let's start with the first app from above, Lock Star. It is there to personalize the lockscreen.

After opening, you can adjust the position of each element: notifications, clock, shortcuts and more. The area that can be taken up by each element is also displayed so that nothing can overlap afterwards. If you don't feel like it, you can also have the lockscreen arranged automatically.

Picture: TechnikNews

In addition to the position, the type of presentation of the elements can also be adjusted. For example with notifications: You can determine whether only the app icon or the written message is displayed. The general content can also be set. You can even hide everything if you want. Very suitable for those who like things to be extremely minimalistic.

Regarding the clock style and the background image, it can be said: You can adjust it in the settings just as well. Samsung only did that one more time so that you didn't have to switch back and forth. I still find the preset clock to be the most beautiful.

Home Up - Home Screen Personalization

This is going to get worse Proproblem with the Home Up plugin. As an extension to personalize the home screen, "redundant" is the best word to describe it.

First of all, there is a whole category of settings in the home screen area that can or should be found in the start screen settings without a plugin. Only here there are fewer limits for the apps pro row set and you can deactivate the font under each app.

With the only three functions that are not available in the settings, you can first change the design and layout of the opened folders on the start screen. On the one hand there is the normal look, which looks like an app drawer, and on the other hand there is a pop-up that I actually find nicer. This can also be adjusted in color.

To do this, you can adjust the menu when sharing a file, i.e. remove certain apps from it.

Picture: TechnikNews

To be honest: For such simple functions it seems to me to be unnecessary to create your own plugin. You should integrate this in a suitable place in the settings. Let's go a step back: If these functions didn't exist, it wouldn't interfere with use.

Customize Quick Star - Control Center

In comparison, Quick Star is better. Here you can personalize the control center above, for example with different colors, where only the control center changes. That reminds me a little of the accent colors of Windows 10 or OxygenOS, I wouldn't call the options super nice now.

I think most of you will use this plugin to set which icons should be shown in the status bar. If the constant WiFi symbol at the top annoys you, you can simply deactivate it. You can also change the position of the clock. With Samsung smartphones without a central punch hole, you will probably be able to pack it in the middle, similar to older iPhones.

The pop-up button for the notifications is simply there so that when you swipe a notification to the left you can place this app in a floating pop-up window over the running app, which is useful when watching videos.

An Proproblem in use is here: It is far too easy to accidentally delete the messages. I personally recommend that Samsung differentiate between left and right swiping. Swipe left to delete, right for more options.

Task changer

One of my favorite plugins is still Task Changer. This allows you to change the design of the cards in the multi-tasking menu.

For example, I really like "Grid" (shown in the picture in the middle). Looks like MIUI and the advantage is that you can display six apps at once - handy for browsing. I also like “Stack” very much. The similarity to iOS can be seen somewhat. There are still individual settings for each design. The mini-mode that can be activated in the Stack or Carousel is particularly suitable for giant cell phones such as the S21Ultra or the A71, because everything is much easier to get here. Another big advantage with him is that the currently running app will not be terminated and will continue to run. This is very pleasant when watching videos or gaming.

Stack, mini mode (Image: TechnikNews)

In addition to this, small details can be set in all designs, such as the position of the current app or the blur effect of the background.

An Proproblem that I noticed: the locked apps in the multi-tasking menu (these are the ones that are marked with a lock and don't go away when you click on "Close all") are no longer visible after changing a design, although they are actually still stored in RAM. You have to lure them again.

Nav Star - three button navigation

With Nav Star you can first set the symbols of the three buttons below and hide them. But if you create a new, custom configuration, the color and position can also be configured. If you always have a firm hand to operate a large smartphone, you can move all three buttons to the right to access them much more easily, unfortunately that doesn't apply to me. You can also add new buttons for certain actions, for example scrolling, pausing or opening the Control Center.

Picture: TechnikNews

Multi Star - Floating Windows

The previous plugins were more or less basically all for setting the optics. These are the simplest personalization options that everyone should understand and recognize. The Multi Star plug-in, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. This allows you to make settings for the floating windows and multi-windows.

First of all, you can also force apps that do not allow this sharing, such as Instagram, to share. As mentioned above, with floating windows it is possible to send 2 messages while waiting in the lobby. There are a couple of ways in OneUI to bring this about. In the multi-tasking menu, in the messages above, etc. With Multi Star you can define the swiping from an upper corner of the screen downwards at an angle to reduce the size of the running app and thereby turn it into a floating window.

Split screen can now also be activated, as on older Android smartphones, by long pressing the button for the recently used apps below. In addition to the function, there are some smaller, more detailed setting options such as locking inactive apps in the RAM so that they do not switch off. But I will not go into this in more detail now

Noti Star - Collect all notifications

With Noti Star you can collect all incoming notifications on your smartphone. Actually, that struck me as superfluous and boring, but I noticed something while using it: Noti Star really collects all notifications on the smartphone, including the deleted messages.

Picture: TechnikNews

One Hand Operation Plus

One Hand Operation Plus is really the first plugin of the second column that I am presenting. For me it is still the most useful and actually there to adjust the swipe from the side. In the past, Samsung smartphones did not have gesture control, but only the three buttons for operation. If you wanted this, you downloaded this plugin. There is only the side swipe, the buttons were still used to return to the desktop or to the multi-tasking menu. Thus, some users have used this tool to ensure that the side swipe does all things on the phone. Without exaggerating.

A swipe from left and right can be divided into twelve different actions, six each left and right, three long and short swipes each, one straight, one direction down and one direction up. Of course, I don't recommend storing twelve different actions because you can quickly forget them. For example, you can switch to other menus, return to the desktop, open some apps, change the volume, switch off, turn the smartphone, activate the flashlight and many more.

Picture: TechnikNews

Sound Assistant - Enthusiasm for audio fans

Sound Assistant is, as the name suggests, a plug-in for the sound on your smartphone. First of all, you can choose between two designs for the volume control menu. By default we have the whole block here, but that can be changed to the small side bar, which I also find more elegant.

To be honest, that's my only use of this extension too. Otherwise, among other things, you can set a separate volume for each app and even return to the app via the volume menu. You can set the media or ringtone volume by default and there is a floating bubble that you can hover over other apps for easier volume adjustment when you click on it. Samsung also offers an equalizer for nerds.

Picture: TechnikNews

Nice Catch - collecting smartphone events

Nice Catch is a bit strange, it collects all the past events of the smartphone. To this day I haven't understood what that was supposed to be good for. But maybe that's the good thing about the plugin. It's like the shadow of your smartphone: when you don't need it, it doesn't bother you, but when you need it, it's always there.

Picture: TechnikNews

Design apps: Keys Cafe, Theme Park, Wonderland

Apps solely for beautification are easy to understand. Let's start from the top with Keys Cafe. With this plugin you can personalize your keyboard on your smartphone down to the last detail. In addition to the color and effect settings that are not appealing to me, you can also adjust the button placement.

Picture: TechnikNews

You can remove letters, numbers, characters and even add certain emojis or special characters on the keyboard that you often need. Each key can be adjusted in terms of width and height. The whole thing also works with the special characters menus. Actually a very nice function so that you don't always have to search for the special characters you need while typing. But I have to criticize the poor clarity in the app.

Picture: TechnikNews

Theme Park can do what the name suggests: create themes. Basically, the colors and accent colors are customizable in the entire software and also in the icons. With these you can also use gimmicks such as borders, etc. When everything is offproand has found a theme, you first have to save it for a long time and can then use it.

With Wonderland you can create a moving background image. The aesthetics of both plugins are really subjective, I don't really like them at all. The style of the background images, the icons and colors of OneUI itself are okay, but from my point of view such designs don't get much out of it. They are more suited to the younger folks who like to have their own style, I think.

Samsung Good Lock - My conclusion

My smartphone in this video runs OneUI 2.5. Samsung's principle of using plugins for fear of not having enough functions and at the same time worrying about too much confusion and too many functions that are actually unnecessary is very clever. But there are some Proproblems in the implementation, because you first have to know the app, which is not advertised, installed or used anywhere. This is simply not the case for normal consumers. There's definitely a lot of work behind all the extensions and somehow it seems to me that Samsung doesn't care about these functions at all. Furthermore, there are many functions and settings that already exist or should exist in the system settings. Installing this as an extra plugin seems a bit unnecessary to me.

But despite everything, I would like to praise them, the plugins. This makes Samsung's OneUI one of the most customizable software. You are also the only manufacturer who uses such methods, so errors or inconsistencies could of course occur at one point or another. One can be happy that the function even exists.

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