TL;DR
- Samsung’s Now Bar on the Galaxy S25 lock screen is getting deeper Gemini integration.
- Users will be able to see Gemini Live’s status and pause or resume conversations directly from the lock screen.
- The feature has already started appearing on some devices, suggesting a wider release is coming soon.
Samsung and Google’s partnership around Gemini is growing even stronger, and a new feature coming to One UI 7 should make it easier for Galaxy users to tap into Gemini’s capabilities. Gemini is already the default voice assistant on the latest Galaxy S25 series of phones, and now it’s getting an even deeper integration with Samsung’s Now Bar.
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.
For those unfamiliar, the Now Bar is a nifty interactive widget that sits at the bottom of the lock screen on Samsung devices running One UI 7. It’s designed to provide quick access to popular apps and services, including Samsung’s own offerings like Samsung Health and Google’s suite of tools, such as Maps. While the Now Bar already works with Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant, it’s now getting a major convenience upgrade with deeper Gemini integration.
X user @TechA7mad spotted the feature on their Galaxy S25 Ultra running Google app version 16.6.28.ve.arm64. As you can see in the screenshots above, the Now Bar is displaying Gemini Live’s status, indicating whether it’s actively listening or on hold. We previously spotted signs of this integration back in December 2024, but it looks like the feature is finally rolling out to users.
For the uninitiated, Gemini Live is a feature that allows users to interact with Google’s AI in a conversational, free-flowing manner. With this new integration, Galaxy users will likely be able to pause and resume their Gemini Live sessions directly from the lock screen, adding a layer of convenience that wasn’t there before.
This mirrors a recent update Google made to Gemini Live on Pixel phones, where call-style controls were added to make the experience more intuitive. The Now Bar implementation will likely follow a similar approach.
It’s still unclear whether this integration is rolling out globally all at once or if Google is taking a staggered approach. However, considering that it has already started appearing on consumer devices, a wider rollout seems imminent.
