Supercharge your Galaxy Z Flip 3’s cover screen with this app

I’ve been using the Galaxy Z Flip 3 for well over a month now and, while I like the phone as a whole, I’m not too fond of the cover screen. Even though the Galaxy Z Flip 3 features a much larger cover screen than its predecessors, it doesn’t offer much in terms of functionality. It currently supports only six widgets, including Music, Weather, Today’s schedule, Next alarm, Voice Recorder, and Timer, which aren’t as useful as you might think. And Samsung doesn’t offer many customization options either. To address this, XDA Recognized Developer jagan2 has come up with CoverScreen OS — an app that simulates a significantly more functional secondary OS for your Galaxy Z Flip 3’s cover screen.

If you own a Galaxy Z Flip 3, you should definitely give CoverScreen OS a shot. It gives you access to a full app drawer, lets you open apps (and even some games) on the cover screen, supports third-party widgets, provides quick toggles to enable/disable a few settings, and even features an active media player card. Furthermore, you can use CoverScreenOS to reply to messages using voice typing and add an LED notification indicator to the cover screen. Check out the video embedded below to see it in action.

I’ve been using CoverScreen OS on my Galaxy Z Flip 3 running One UI 4 for a little over a day now, and it’s a major improvement over what Samsung offers by default. If you want to give it a go, you can follow these steps to install it on your Galaxy Z Flip 3:

• Download CoverScreen OS from the Google Play Store or this XDA forum thread
• Set up Bixby (required for fingerprint unlock to launch apps on the cover screen)
• Set side key to launch Bixby on long press (Navigate to Settings > Advanced features > Side key and toggle ‘Wake Bixby’ under ‘Press and hold’)
• Launch CoverScreen OS and login with your Google account
• Follow the on-screen instructions to grant accessibility permissions
• Tap on the toggle in the top right corner of the app to grand notification access and enable CoverScreen OS
• Fold your Galaxy Z Fold 3 and you should see a welcome notification from CoverScreen OS

Note: Make sure you have Bixby enabled on your device before setting up CoverScreen OS. It doesn’t seem to work if you install and set up the app first and then enable Bixby.

Once you have CoverScreen OS set up on your Galaxy Z Fold 3, you can customize the widgets you see on the cover screen by heading into the app and tapping on the ‘+’ button at the bottom. After picking the widget of your choice, tap on the toggle next to it to enable it. You can also reorder the widgets by tapping and holding the button to the left of the widget and dragging it to the desired position.

Before you proceed, note that CoverScreen OS is currently in its early stages of development. Therefore, you might encounter some bugs. It’s also worth mentioning that if you’ve updated your Galaxy Z Flip 3 to One UI 4, you might not be able to open apps on the cover screen. jagan2 is currently working on a fix for this issue, and it should roll out with a future update.

If you’re still willing to try CoverScreen OS, here are some navigation instructions from the developer:

• Swipe right to open the notifications screen
• Swipe left to show custom widgets
• Swipe down to open Quick settings toggles
• Swipe up to access media playback controls
• Tap on Home to open app drawer
• Notifications:
  • Tap on notifications to see more details and swipe down to go back to the notifications list
  • Swipe right to exit to the home screen from the app drawer
• If you open an app on the CoverScreen:
  • Swipe left from the right edge to navigate back
  • Swipe up from the bottom edge to head straight back to the app drawer
  • Swipe right from the app drawer to go back to the home screen
  • Click on any text input field to open voice typing keyboard (In some apps, you may have to click twice to open the voice typing keyboard)

Make sure to let us know what you think of CoverScreen OS in the comments section below. I’m already a fan and I can’t wait to see what jagan2 has in store for future updates.

CoverScreen OS (Free⁺, Google Play) →

It’s also worth noting that the Good Lock team is working on bringing new features to the Galaxy Z Flip 3’s cover screen. At the moment, the team hasn’t shared any details about the upcoming features. We’ll make sure to let you know as soon as we have more information.

Featured image by XDA Recognized Developer jagan2

The post Supercharge your Galaxy Z Flip 3’s cover screen with this app appeared first on xda-developers.

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