Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- An Android Authority teardown has revealed that Samsung is working on a double-tap gesture for the back of Galaxy phones.
- This feature currently requires users to download a Samsung Good Lock app, but we’ve discovered it in a leaked One UI 8.5 build.
- This discovery suggests that you can double-tap the back of your Galaxy phone without downloading a separate app.
We’ve seen a few smartphone brands offering a back-tap gesture in recent years. This lets you double-tap the back of the phone to activate certain apps or features. Samsung also offers this gesture with the aid of a downloadable app. Now, we’ve discovered that the company is working on integrating this feature into One UI itself.
We dug into the latest internal build of One UI 8.5 and discovered that Samsung is working on a “double back tap” feature. Newly found strings, seen below, include the “double_back_tap” name and specifically describe the gesture.
Code
<string name="double_back_tap_title">Double back tap</string>
<string name="double_back_tap_description">Gently tap the back of the phone twice while the screen is on.</string>Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?
We also discovered a list of features that can be triggered by double-tapping the back of the Galaxy phone. Check them out below.
- AI Select
- Flashlight
- Notifications
- Open app
- Privacy display
- Quick settings
- Screenshot
In other words, it certainly seems like Samsung is finally bringing the double-tap gesture into its phone software. This would be a welcome move as Galaxy owners currently have to download the RegiStar app to activate this option. RegiStar lets you double-tap to take and share a screenshot, access Gemini, start a pop-up window, show notifications, show recent apps, go back, or open a specific app. So we hope some of the triggers seen in the Good Lock app (e.g., Gemini) come to One UI 8.5.
If confirmed, this would be an overdue move by Samsung. The Galaxy maker would join the likes of Google, Apple, Xiaomi, and ASUS in natively offering a double-tap back gesture on its phones.
Thanks to ThatJoshGuy for the assistance with this article!
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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