This OxygenOS 16 feature fixes my biggest annoyance with OnePlus phones

In case you might have missed it, most Android manufacturers these days are pursuing the iPhone’s success. Two ways for brands to achieve that objective have been to establish their own ecosystems or to replicate iOS-like visual elements. On this topic, my colleague Rita El Koury recently wrote about the profound impact that Apple’s design choices have on Android brands.

While most Android purists might disagree, I’m glad that one of my favorite Android brands, OnePlus, is implementing some iOS-inspired features. One of my favorites lets you control accessories, especially wireless earbuds, much more easily. The addition comes with OnePlus’ new OxygenOS 16 interface, introduced to the OnePlus 13 late last month and now rapidly spreading to several older or less premium devices (while the OnePlus 15 arrived with it out of the box).

In this post, I’d like to address why OxygenOS’s improved controls for earbuds are among my favorite OxygenOS 16 features — and how it remedies my biggest non-major issue with older firmware on OnePlus phones.

OnePlus has been selling AirPods-rivaling wireless earbuds for a few years now. I’ve used nearly all of them, ranging from the flagship Buds Pro 3 to the most affordable Nord Buds. For about half the price of Samsung’s flagship pair, OnePlus’s premium offering comes with a great mix of brilliant sound, excellent codec support, and a nifty fit. Besides good hardware, the earbuds offer software-based enhancement, such as Spatial Audio, and sound personalization features.

However, if there’s one aspect that’s always stood out to me like a sore thumb, it’s the crazy number of steps required to change basic settings like ANC mode. If you’ve used a pair of OnePlus earbuds, you’d know what I am talking about. If not, please allow me to elaborate.

If you want to change even the most basic settings for the OnePlus Buds, the only way — until recently — was to go to the Bluetooth menu in Settings. From there, you can select the specific pair of earbuds you want to change the settings for, and then tap “Earbud functions,” which then opens up the space to fiddle with the basic settings.

The number of steps can feel overwhelming. This will especially bother you if you have, or still use, a Samsung Galaxy or an iPhone, both of which offer quicker access to these settings.

For me, it has been one of the minor annoyances with OnePlus devices and OxygenOS so far. It wouldn’t stop me from buying a OnePlus phone, but it has continued to irk me. I have even mentioned it to folks from the OxygenOS and audio equipment teams at OnePlus at every chance I have had.

And I’m glad they finally listened.

Thankfully, this annoyance is finally going away with OxygenOS 16. The new Android 16-based interface that OnePlus started rolling out at the end of October offers much easier options for configuring your OnePlus earbuds.

OxygenOS 16 introduces a new option to customize Bluetooth earbud settings right where you’d expect them — right in the Quick Settings panel. This latest addition is part of the wider Quick Settings overhaul that OxygenOS 16 brings, including the options to move the brightness and volume sliders more freely, or add dedicated widgets for audio profiles (which becomes vital as OnePlus moves away from the three-way alert slider).

With the liberty to play around more freely with Quick Settings — though still a bit locked out compared to what Samsung’s upcoming One UI 8.5 update might bring — I can now also add dedicated widgets in the Quick Settings for various system apps. One of them is called “My Devices,” and it transforms how OnePlus phones interact with accessories or other connected devices (via Device Connect).

This new Quick Settings widget is available in two sizes — occupying two or four columns — and features modern, minimal icons that make it much easier to spot and tap the buttons. In the smaller, two-column option, I tap the earbuds icon, which redirects me to the dedicated earbuds page with quick controls to change the noise cancellation mode or check the battery. Here, as you would expect, I can cycle between different ANC modes or choose the level of noise cancellation.

For more elaborate settings, there’s an “Earbud Settings” shortcut at the bottom that takes me to the dedicated page that I could previously only access through Bluetooth settings, as I mentioned above.

The shortcut for the small addition obviously makes switching ANC modes much easier. And, by reducing the number of steps, the new shortcut feels less fraught than the previous version.

For times when I still find the Quick Settings shortcut onerous, OnePlus offers another way to access these features: homescreen widgets. OxygenOS 16 introduces the option to add widgets to control connected devices, including earbuds.

These widgets can be used individually on each device or as a collective control hub to get a summary of multiple devices. I prefer using individual widgets because they let me control multiple connected pairs simultaneously. Notably, this is a step ahead of Samsung’s implementation, which only allows me to control the pair of earbuds currently in use.

With the individual widget, I can accomplish the same things as the shortcut in the Quick Settings — access the battery and toggle between noise-cancellation modes. The widgets also display a clear image of the wireless earbuds, making it easier to differentiate them if you use multiple widgets. And there’s a widget showing me a cluster of all the different apps connected to my OnePlus phones, through different means. It’s not the same as the Apple ecosystem, but it’s a positive step in that direction.

I am not too pleased with the fact that these widgets cannot be resized, but they can be placed in a widget stack, which OxygenOS 16 also adds support for.

As I wrote above, OxygenOS 16’s My Devices feature serves a broader purpose than just letting me control earphones, even though that is what I reckon most users will rely on it for.

As its name suggests, My Devices lets me easily access and manage other OnePlus devices connected to my OnePlus phone. These include audio devices or accessories, such as the OnePlus Pad’s pencil. The section also allows adding devices that utilize OnePlus’ cross-device control features. That means I can add my OnePlus tablets and explore with its file storage — or even add my iPhone or PC, given those devices have been set up with OnePlus’ O+ Connect.

Funnily, OnePlus doesn’t include the OnePlus Watch here, which makes it look like the second reason the company isn’t too keen to support its Wear OS devices (the first one’s here). But that’s another rant for another time.

While OnePlus’s new quick settings and widget additions solve one of my biggest gripes, I would like a few more issues to be addressed in the subsequent updates. For starters, the new Quick Settings customization options are currently available only when notifications and Quick Settings are split across two pages, somewhat like the Control Center in iOS. If you switch back to the traditional view, the features disappear, which is less than desirable.

Second, as I mentioned above, I would like OnePlus to add support for the OnePlus Watch 2 so it’s easier to check its battery via widgets. It’s not something I would actively do, but I prefer being reminded at random rather than waiting for the Watch to reach low battery before I can charge it. And lastly, the two-column widget in quick settings automatically shows the last device you interacted with. I would really like OnePlus to offer an option to pin favorites.

That said, I’m genuinely pleased OnePlus is finally acting on this change. Many of you would feel this doesn’t require as much attention, especially since I can change the noise cancellation modes on the earbuds’ stems. I know! But that’s also why I called it a “minor” inconvenience, not a major one. It’s a matter of preference, and it’s especially useful for me as I switch between different pairs OnePlus has sent me for testing over the years, each with different controls on the stems. That’s another task for OnePlus, by the way.

In the meantime, all I can do is appreciate the time the team has taken to refine utility across my beloved OnePlus devices, and I hope there’s more to come.