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OxygenOS won applause for staying true to Android stock, but has since developed more of its own personality. This is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it bears a strong resemblance to Samsung’s One UI. Despite the visual transformation, the skin of the OnePlus has not only retained many of its small features, but some of its recent iterations have also introduced new tricks to make your life a little easier.
We have put together a list of our favorite resources that are hidden in the various corners and nooks of OxygenOS.
Swipe up to search for apps
With hundreds of apps installed on your phone, using the search bar is by far the fastest way to open the one you want, but it’s still a multi-step process. OnePlus goes further, including a quick gesture that takes you straight to the search bar in the app drawer. Tidy!
As you slide up to open the app drawer, hold on for half a second and that’s it. The keyboard appears automatically, waiting for you to start typing in the search bar at the top. It is enabled by default and also works on older OnePlus phones. I can’t stress enough how useful this feature is and saves time.
Gestures to turn off the screen
Gestures seem to be taking full control of our smartphones now, but OnePlus had a thing for them long before Google. In addition to its own version of full-screen navigation gestures, OxygenOS has its much-loved off-screen gestures. The basic idea is to draw one-touch letters on the phone’s screen when it’s off for quick action, such as turning on the flashlight or jumping directly to the video recording.
You can even program it to open the application of your choice, although this requires you to unlock your phone before the application screen appears. In addition to these, you can also assign each of the letters to open the rear or front camera immediately. Outside of these alphabetic gestures, you get the usual double tap to wake up along with some exclusive music controls. Drawing the pause (||), forward (>) and rewind (<) icons on the closed screen will allow you to play / pause, skip to the next track and go back to the previous track, in that order. It's a great way to control music playback and works just as well in streaming apps like Spotify as it does in local players.
Go to Buttons and gestures section of settings application and then click Quick gestures. This is where you will find the entire list of these convenient and intuitive lock screen gestures.
Parallel Apps
Having two simultaneous instances of a single application is not something you can enable on any phone, or at least the process of getting there is not particularly easy. Technically, you can use the same application on different device profiles, but this is often very cumbersome for just one or two applications. OnePlus’ OxygenOS is among the handful of mobile skins that natively support the feature, and OnePlus calls its version of parallel apps. People using two SIM cards can use it to have WhatsApp accounts with their phone numbers or run two instances of an app like Uber.
Among the applications that I installed on my phone, several social media and communication applications are supported, including Twitter, Telegram, Skype, WhatsApp and others. Taxi call services like Uber and Ola from India are also on the list, along with a local Paytm mobile wallet. The usefulness of parallel applications can vary depending on all the applications you have on your phone, but it seems that the most popular ones are supported immediately.
To access your personalized list of supported applications, you need to set the Utilities going inside settings. Once there, click Parallel Apps. Now activate the application you want to duplicate, but be careful when turning off any of them: this will erase the data from the parallel instance forever.
Live Caption
Live Caption has been extremely useful for those with hearing problems or almost anyone on occasions when increasing the volume is not an option. Pixel phones were the pioneers of the feature, but Google has already opened it to other OEMs. OnePlus is one of the few that has implemented it so far.
In the phone’s volume controls, you’ll find an additional button to activate the live caption whenever you need it. A live – and accurate – transcript of everything playing on your screen will appear in the center. It works on the entire device and even when the phone is muted. It is one of those useful resources that will make you wonder how you ever lived without it.
In landscape mode.
Quick Start
We all develop muscle memory for that application that we instinctively use the moment we unlock our phone. You can reduce this two-step process to a single touch using Quick Launch. This feature allows you to choose from a short list of applications (or even application shortcuts) that you use frequently and show them on the lock screen when you press and hold the fingerprint reader. You can scroll through the list and highlight an application, which will open instantly.
Left and Center: Quick boot settings, Right: Quick release in action
This may sound very similar to the gestures to turn off the screen that we discussed earlier, but Quick Launch differs in some fundamental ways. On the one hand, the latter becomes much more complex with all the applications on your device and their shortcuts, allowing you to go straight to a function in the application, such as adding a calendar entry or opening a new anonymous tab in Chrome. In addition, Quick Launch actually looks faster than the screen off gestures, which require twice for the same job (since the phone needs to be unlocked to start the app).
As you may have guessed, the feature only works on OnePlus phones with a fingerprint reader on the display, so those using older devices are out of luck. To access the option, go to Utilities at the settings and click Quick Start. There you can enable it and choose between one same long list of applications and shortcuts on your phone.
Fast landscape response
Messaging apps, in particular, have a hard time adjusting to landscape mode, with the keyboard usually taking up most of the vertical space. They are basically unusable (and kind of frustrating) that way. However, OxygenOS has a tool that you can use to have a better chat experience when someone interrupts your YouTube video.
When you click reply on a notification banner in landscape mode, your OnePlus phone will open the chat topic in a mini overlay on the left. A more manageable floating keyboard appears on the right and is even better if you have activated finger typing. This feature works as expected and is something I would like to see on other phones as well.
OnePlus users can enable it on Utilities section of settings application.
Dark mode programming
Dark mode on older OnePlus phones followed a complicated process, requiring you to drill down manually in the Settings app to make it work. Worse yet, this complicated process would even mess up your custom theme.
Fortunately, the latest version of OxygenOS has added a much more convenient and necessary programming feature. You can now set the dark mode to turn on automatically after sunset or enter your own custom schedule. If you still want some manual control, you can easily add a toggle in the quick settings menu.
This new scheduling option is available in your phone’s screen settings.
Many recent phones are adopting a dedicated assistant key – an idea widely publicized by Samsung for its Bixby voice assistant. But a few days after using the button, you will find that it is more irritating than useful with all accidental presses. If you are one of those eccentrics who would like to have a physical key to invoke Google Assistant, you can do this on your OnePlus phone using an integrated OxygenOS feature (note: the Assistant is started by default with the power key on OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro).
Under Buttons and gestures, you will find a key that allows you to hold the power key for half a second to open the voice bot. If you activate this, the power menu will appear on a longer press of three seconds (again, except on OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro devices, which only allow you to have one or the other). Just above this option, there is another button that allows you to click the lock key twice to go directly to the camera application. You can use these two features simultaneously.
OxygenOS is a software skin that never fails to impress with all its fun little features. In addition to this short list of handpicked utilities, OxygenOS has much more in its favor. If you think we missed something that you think should be on the list, let us know in the comments.
Even more goodies
Updated to include swipe up to search for apps, Live Caption, quick response in landscape mode and programming in dark mode.
Ryne Hager and Scott Scrivens contributed to this post.