Coolest Things You Can Do With Android Hidden System UI Tuner
Google has introduced a nice hidden menu in Android Marshmallow called System UI Tuner. It contains a ton of neat little tweaks like hiding status bar icons or showing battery percentage. Here’s how to enable it and what to do about it.
System UI Tuner has many little options to make your phone more comfortable to use. To use it, you need Android Marshmallow or later. To enable it, follow these steps:
- Pull down the notification panel on your phone, then open the quick settings menu.
- Press and hold the gear icon at the top of the screen for about five seconds. Then you will see a message that the System UI Tuner has been added to the settings.
- Open the Settings app on your phone and scroll down. There you will find the System UI Tuner.
This process may be different if you are using the skinned version of Android. Once the menu is activated, here are some of the settings you can change.
Display the battery percentage in the status bar
For those of us who are constantly micromanaging our battery, this is a godsend. When this option is selected, the battery percentage will be displayed above the battery icon in the status bar. You can choose to display the percentage only while charging, or all the time.
Hide unnecessary icons from the status bar
The status bar is filled with icons, but you probably don’t need to see them all. For example, I don’t need to constantly see if Bluetooth is on. If I need to check, I can scroll down the notification bar. This menu lets you permanently hide icons for things like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular data, Airplane mode, or Do Not Disturb from the status bar.
Add, remove, or rearrange quick setting icons
Android Quick Settings Shadow tries to intelligently guess which settings you need to tweak frequently and adds them automatically. Unfortunately, he can sometimes be wrong. On Android Marshmallow, you can dive into the System UI Tuner menu to manually add shortcuts or change the ones you have. Note. In Android N Preview, this feature is built into the regular OS, so this hidden menu is unnecessary.
Turn on night mode to adjust the color temperature and switch to dark themes.
Google is a little blurry with night mode, but it is back in Android N. If you are using the developer preview , you can use the System UI Tuner menu to activate night mode. When active, your phone automatically detects the time of day and adjusts the color temperature of your display accordingly. It will also use a dark theme for apps like Settings where possible.
Show Do Not Disturb mode when adjusting volume
Do not disturb mode is very handy when you just need your phone to turn off for a minute. Most phones activate it if you press the volume down button when your phone is already in silent mode, but the System UI Tuner lets you add a more obvious switch when you adjust the volume at all. You can also disable the shortcut to the normal volume buttons if you don’t want to accidentally activate it. Like the new Night Mode features, this setting is exclusive to the pre-release Android N.
The System UI Tuner menu changes over time as Google adds or removes features, so it’s worth checking back when you get an Android update.