I tried Samsung’s DIY Home feature in One UI 7, and I wish I hadn’t

Customization has always been Samsung’s bread and butter. Above all else, it’s the reason I steer people towards Galaxy devices — yes, even more than flexible cameras, excellent build quality, and reliable software updates. There’s something about an Android phone you can make truly your own that feels right. And, when Apple’s approach to customization on iOS was to force every app to the top of your display, the choice couldn’t have been easier.

Now, though, Samsung has gone too far to the dark side. It’s thrown out the fragile rules that keep Android home screens organized in favor of adopting true anarchy. I opened my Galaxy S25 up to try DIY Home in One UI 7, and I fear I’ve lost all sense of organization. Here’s where it all went wrong.

I explored DIY Home, knowing that it would probably challenge my usual One UI preferences. I mean, I tend to keep a pretty minimalist home screen, so any settings panel that requires me to install Good Lock, download a module, and then rework my layout feels, well, maximalist. But that’s precisely what I did in the name of customization.

At first, everything seemed… okay. I didn’t mind dragging and dropping an app here or there, and I liked that I could make certain folders larger than others, similar to what Nothing has implemented on its Nothing OS. I dragged a few extra apps over to the right side of my screen, making them much easier to reach with my right thumb, and I shifted less-used elements like the weather widget and Now Bar over to the left.

Then, chaos ensued. You may not know this about me (in fact, why would you?), but I don’t love it when food touches on my plate — especially at Thanksgiving. Even though I like each element separately, they all have their own places and distinct flavors, and I’d much rather keep it that way. I’m not this picky in all aspects of my daily life, but as it turns out, I definitely am with my phone.

As you can probably imagine, the second I let go of an app too early and it touched another, I was all the way out on DIY Home. There’s just no chance I’d be okay with a home screen where Slack and Instagram could sit right on top of each other, practically daring me to doomscroll and waste the rest of my workday. Yet, that’s what DIY Home dared me to do.

After a short stretch with DIY Home — no more than a few hours — I pulled the plug. Dr. Ian Malcolm’s words echoed through my head as I did so: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” and he was right to question my intentions. But, I had seen colleagues come up with chaotic layouts, and strangers on Reddit had created beautiful layouts that broke my brain just a little bit, so you can’t fault me for wanting to try it.

However, as I tossed the famous Jurassic Park quote back and forth in my head, trying to balance it with Samsung’s actual implementation, I found myself siding more and more with Dr. Malcolm. Although Samsung has always favored customization, it’s also kept reasonable ground rules in place. It let you fine-tune your own grid, but it did so while keeping that grid in place.

With DIY Home, though, all of those rules are off. You can drag and drop apps and widgets like I did, but you can also add emoji stickers, freeform doodles, and text boxes to your layout. Do any of these things do, well, anything? No, they’re purely decorative. However, they can add to the overall clutter of your layout and, at least to me, make everything a little bit harder to find.

Of course, there are exactly two groups of people who make me a little nervous about the power of DIY Home: My grandparents and people with young kids. On the one hand, I’m already the de facto Geek Squad for my grandma and grandpa, so I know how easily they stumble into settings I never would have found. I know it would take just one phone call about misplacing an app for me to spring into action and try to fix things.

Conversely, there’s no easier way to pacify a little one than to give them a screen to play with. I’ve seen it work with my nephew, and I’ve been endlessly relieved that my phone isn’t the one picking up those fingerprints. However, just like my grandparents, I know my cousin wouldn’t love it if his son stacked up all his apps and doodled on them, causing him to reset the DIY Home layout he might have previously created.

But hey, if you’re the only one who ever touches your phone and have the time and attention to make the perfect DIY Home layout, then I think you should experiment. I think you should try to create an artsy, if impractical, home screen layout, and I would love to see what you come up with. I’m happy to be proven wrong by the more creative Samsung users, even while my DIY Home toggle remains set firmly to Off.