lo and behold, Samsung’s Android 15-based One UI 7’s first beta is finally out now, and although it is only available on the Galaxy S24 series (excluding the S24 FE) in Germany, India, Poland, South Korea, the UK, and the US for now, the beta should expand to older flagships and more regions soon.
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The OS skin, which adds Samsung’s dab of UI changes and novel features on top of Android 15’s feature set, has an iOS-like feel to it — complete with a new ‘Now Bar,’ akin to Apple’s implementation of the Live Activities widget and a split-up between the notification and Quick Settings drawers. Speaking of major changes, the new beta finally implements an app screen tweak that fans have long-been clamoring for — one that brings Samsung’s devices closer to the Pixel experience.
Android 15 for the rest of us
One UI 7 beta finally unlocks a vertical app drawer, something that Samsung has inherently avoided since its early TouchWiz days. It’s worth noting that post-update, the new drawer is enabled by default, marking a significant shift in the company’s approach to UI design and the way it wants its devices to be used.
Fans of the old UI would be happy to know that even though the new vertical drawer is enabled by default, you can still go back to the horizontal (paginated) layout — the implementation, however, isn’t as straightforward as toggling between “vertical” and “horizontal” layouts. Instead, the two layouts are tied to the way you sort your apps.
There’s an ‘Alphabetical order’ (default post-update) that triggers the vertical app drawer, and then there’s the ‘Custom order’ which reverts the app drawer to its classic paginated look.
It’s worth noting that the latter, Custom order, lets you move your apps around, while Alphabetical, as its name suggests, will strictly sort your apps according to their first alphabet. If you have a lot of apps on your Galaxy device, using the vertical layout will also unlock a right-aligned alphabet scrollbar to skip to the apps that start with the latter half of the English alphabet. Additionally, folders are still a thing. In the new vertical layout, folders snap to the top of the app drawer, whereas in custom order, those folders appear wherever you place them.
Additionally, the app search bar has now been moved to the bottom on both layouts, and, at least for now, there appears to be no way to move it back up. App drawer customization may land with subsequent beta versions, though that’s just speculation (and a bit of wishful thinking).
Most importantly, the search bar is also where users will find the option to toggle between the horizontal and vertical layouts. Tapping the three dot icon on the right of the search bar will pull up a panel with ‘Sort,’ ‘Clean up pages,’ and ‘Settings,’ with the option to toggle between Custom and Alphabetical order conveniently located within the ‘Sort’ menu.
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