OnePlus 3 Android Wallpaper DSC00389

30+ OnePlus 3 Tips & Tricks

Looking to get the most out of the OnePlus 3? You’ve come to the right place. We already told you about the first 15 things you should do after taking it out of the box, but now it’s time to dig a little deeper. With over 30+ tips and tricks, we’ve uncovered all the best features the OnePlus 3 has to offer. When all is said and done, you’ll have graduated from OnePlus 3 beginner to expert in not time flat. Have a look.

Take a screenshot on the OnePlus 3

Before we get into any of the cool and unique features found inside the OnePlus 3, we need to make sure everyone is aware of how to perform one of the most basic and important functions found on the phone: taking a screenshot.

Depending on where you’re coming from (Galaxy device or the iPhone), this might be completely new to you. To take a screenshot, simply press and hold the power and volume down buttons simultaneously. After about one second, you’ll see the screenshot animation letting you know it’s been saved to your device.

While the phone is awake, you can also bring up the Power menu by holding the power button. From there, you’ll see the Screenshot option. Just tap on it and the menu will disappear and take a screenshot of wherever you’re at in the UI.

To share your screenshot with others, simply open the Gallery app, swipe over to the Collections tab and locate the screenshot you just took inside the Screenshot folder. Once you’ve opened the screenshot, tap anywhere to pull up the available options and press the share button (3 connected dots). From there, select the contact, conversation, or app you’d like to share the screenshot with and you’re good to go.

Adjust the color balance to make the display cooler or warmer

By default, the OnePlus 3 display features a more blue-ish tint. Depending on your personal preference, you may want to warm things up a bit. Thankfully, the OnePlus has a display setting that allows you to do just that. Here’s where you’ll find it:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Adjust the Color balance slider to desired tint

Use each thumb twice when setting up fingerprints

The OnePlus 3 fingerprint reader is pretty darn accurate, but if you’re holding the phone in a different position you can throw it off. Because of this, we made sure to record each of our thumbs twice, scanning slightly different areas of our thumb with each entry.

With up to 5 fingerprints that can be stored on the phone, you can get flexible with it. Either each thumb twice + one index finger, or your primary thumb twice and both index fingers — whatever you like. You’ll find the option to set up additional fingerprints in Settings > Security & fingerprint > Fingerprint > Add fingerprint.

Use home screen gestures to quickly access notifications and search

The OnePlus Launcher is the default home screen app that comes on the OnePlus 3. Unlike most stock launchers, it’s packed to the brim with useful features. For instance, built-in gestures allow you to quickly access the notification panel by swiping down anywhere on the home screen, or up to access a quick Google Search.

Both gestures can be turned off if you feel like they’re getting in the way, just long press a blank area of the home screen and select Customize to pull up the toggles for Gesture.

Take full advantage of OnePlus “Shelf” (or remove it completely)

By default, the OnePlus 3 uses the OnePlus Launcher, a custom home screen with one big feature: a special home screen called Shelf. It’s located directly left of the main home screen and shows you all kinds of information from the weather, recently opened apps, and even allows you to jot down a quick memo or reminder.

Shelf can also display various app widgets, making it the perfect place to store multiple widgets without taking up room on your main home screen. Here’s how you do it:

  1. Swipe the right to open Shelf
  2. Tap the “+” button to add a widget
  3. Tap on the widget to add to Shelf
  4. Long press on widget and let go to resize
  5. Long press and swipe to the right to remove widget

Should you decide Shelf isn’t for you, no worries. You can always turn off Shelf by following these steps:

  1. Long press on blank area of your home screen
  2. Tap on Customize
  3. Turn off the Enable Shelf toggle
  4. Tap Save in the upper right corner

Create a unique home screen by changing your app icons

While changing the wallpaper on your phone is enough customizing for some folks, you might want to take things a step further by changing your app icons as well. Luckily, the stock OnePlus Launcher supports icon packs, so all you have to do is find your favorites in the Google Play Store. While most of the good ones are typically in the $1 to $2 range, you should have no trouble finding some that are free to download.

Once you found one (or a few) that you like, here’s how you can change the icons on the OnePlus 3:

  1. Search “icons” or “icon pack” on Google Play (you’ll find a handful of them here)
  2. Install them like any other app
  3. Once installed, long press on a blank area of the home screen
  4. Tap on Customize
  5. Swipe on the cards displayed at the bottom until you reach Icons
  6. Tap on the icon pack you’ve installed to preview it in the thumbnail
  7. Select Save in upper right corner to apply

Use Smart Lock to keep your phone unlocked in places you trust

The OnePlus 3 has a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner to keep your phone locked down tight, but what’s the point of keeping your phone locked down when you’re resting at home with the family? Or perhaps, you only want your phone locked when you’re not near it, in either case, Smart Lock allows you to keep your device unlocked while in trusted situations like these. Here’s how you can set it up:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select Security & fingerprint
  3. Tap on Smart Lock (enter password/PIN/pattern)

From there you’ll find a few options:

Use Gestures to quickly launch apps from the lockscreen

You probably never thought about it, but unlocking your phone just to launch an app or skip to the next track of your music player takes time. But there’s a better way. Gestures on the OnePlus 3 allow you to perform actions without even waking the phone. Everything from double tapping the display to wake your phone, opening the camera or flashlight by drawing a letter on the display, even basic music controls — all without having to turn on the display. Here’s where you’ll find the setting for each:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Select Gestures
  3. Enable specific gestures by ticking their check box
    Or…
  4. Turn all of them off using the toggle at the top

Once enabled, perform the gesture on your phone while the screen is off to quickly launch the specific app or function. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

View notifications just by waving your hand over the OnePlus 3

Ambient display is one of the better features Google introduced in Android back in Lollipop. Although it’s been tweaked a little bit on the OnePlus 3, the feature makes it so the display turns on briefly whenever you receive a notification, allowing you to quickly see if it’s something that needs addressing. Because the screen wakes in black and white mode, it conserves battery better than waking your phone and swiping down the notification tray and is perfect when your phone is propped up at your desk for hands-free viewing of your notifications.

But there’s also a touchless wake feature that allows you to quickly peek at notifications in the Ambient display mode just by waving your hand over the front of the OnePlus 3. Here’s where you’ll find both of the settings in order to activate them:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Go into the Display settings
  3. Turn on Ambient display
  4. Turn on Proximity wake

Customize the colors of the notification LED light

Because not everyone stares at their phone every second of the day, the LED notification on the light on the OnePlus 3 tells you when you have a notification waiting for you. The light can even be customized so you can pick and choose which colors it displays when you have a notification, the phone is charging, or just when the battery is low. Here’s where you’ll find the setting:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select Customization
  3. Tap on LED notifications

From there, you can choose between 8 colors for the following options:

Unlock hidden Developer options to speed up animations

Without question, the OnePlus 3 is one of the fastest phones we’ve ever gotten our hands on. But all those silky smooth animations are only getting in the way between you and the apps. To speed things up even further, you can decrease the animation scale duration in the Settings app to make the UI feel more snappy. It’s not available by default, so you’ll need to first activate the hidden Developer options by following these steps:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select About phone
  3. Scroll down and tap Build Number 7 times
  4. “You are now a developer” message will appear
  5. Press back and you’ll see a new setting: Developer options

Then…

  1. Open Developer options
  2. Scroll down select Window animation and choose .5x
  3. Select Transition animation and choose .5x
  4. Select Animator duration scale and choose .5x

Once you’re all done, go back to the home screen and turn off the display using the power button. Wake your phone to enjoy a speedier, more kicky fast UI. Keep in mind that the setting is persistent, so you don’t have to worry about having to redo anything after a reboot or system update.

Show the battery percentage in the status bar

Although the battery icon in the status bar is a great visual indicator of how much juice you have remaining, sometimes you want cold hard numbers. There’s two different ways to display an actual battery percentage: a percentage that replaces the battery icon, or the percentage inside the battery icon. Here’s how you enable one or the other:

  1. Open up the Settings app
  2. Select Battery
  3. Tap the battery icon at the top
  4. Choose the Battery percent option

To enable the percent inside the battery icon, you’ll need to activate the hidden Developer options first. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select About phone
  3. Scroll down and tap Build Number 7 times
  4. “You are now a developer” message will appear

Now to unlock the hidden System UI Tuner settings and show an embedded battery percentage…

  1. Slide open the notification panel
  2. Hold the Settings gear icon for about 10 seconds
  3. When released, you’ll see message “Congrats! System UI Tuner has been added to Settings“
  4. Open the Settings app
  5. Scroll down and select System UI Tuner
  6. Turn on Show embedded battery percentage

Re-arrange (or hide) your Quick Settings toggles

The Quick Settings toggles are one of the more convenient features that were introduced back in Android 5.0 Lollipop. The ability to quickly turn on or off basic functions like WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, or even adjust the brightness with a few quick swipes is something we can’t live without.

But the Quick Settings panel can get a little crowded. If you’d like to thin things out a bit, the OnePlus 3 gives you the ability to re-arrange — even remove — some of the buttons to suit your tastes. For instance, we can’t think of a time when “inverting colors” would get any use from us, so we removed it from being displayed in Quick Settings. Here’s how:

  1. Pull down the notification shade (may have to do it twice if you have notifications)
  2. Tap the edit icon (pencil)
  3. Drag tiles to re-arrange, or tap to a button to show/hide them
  4. Tap the circle to revert to original positions
  5. When finished, tap the disk icon to save changes

Customize the navigation buttons with different actions

During the initial setup process, the OnePlus 3 asks if you’d like to enable on-screen navigation buttons (back, home and recents buttons), or use the capacitive keys surrounding the fingerprint sensor on the phone’s bezel. If for whatever reason you wanted to experiment with either method, you can always change it up by going into Buttons, located inside the Settings app.

It’s there you’ll also find options for swapping the order of the recent and back buttons (like how it is on Samsung devices), or even changing the behavior of the back, home, and recents buttons by adding secondary functionality like long press or double tap actions for each. With the ability to choose actions like voice search, open Shelf, or even turn the screen off, you can really have some fun with it.

Enable a pure black Dark Mode UI

We’ve talked about this numerous times in the past, but one of the benefits having an AMOLED display offers over traditional LCD is it’s kinder to your battery. Unlike LCD which illuminates the entire display regardless of what is being displayed, the AMOLED display on the OnePlus 3 only illuminates the pixels that need it. For instance, viewing a pure black wallpaper requires little power since there aren’t any pixels to light up.

Whether you’re looking to extend battery life or just prefer something a little easier on the eyes, the OnePlus 3 offers a Dark Mode that enables a system-wide dark theme across most of the UI. It’s located in Settings > Customization.

Unlike “Night Modes” we’ve seen in the past (like the Android N version that was eventually scrapped), this is an AMOLED-friendly pure black theme. Apps like the Settings or Files applications will be darkened, even the app drawer and folders on the home screen. You can even change the accent color of the UI, something that is only available in Dark Mode.

Use Night Mode for less eye strain during the evening hours

Whether you’re watching a TV show before bed, or just trying to catch up on social media after a long hard day’s work, there have been enough studies showing the negative impact viewing your smartphone at night can have on your sleep schedule. This has something to do with the blue light emitted from the display that causes your brain to think it’s still daytime out and produces less melatonin, your body’s own natural sleep aid.

We’ve seen smartphone OEMs combat this by adding a feature that changes the tint of your smartphone display, removing that harsh blue light for something a little warmer and more sleep-friendly. Similar to Night Shift on the iPhone, the OnePlus 3 has a feature they simply call “Night mode.” Located in the Settings app, you can further adjust the warmth of the display. Night mode is also available as a Quick Settings toggle inside your notification shade.

Tweak the Alert Slider for custom sound profiles

The OnePlus 3’s Alert Slider is the physical switch along the left side of the phone that allows you to quickly change your sounds profiles without having to wake or unlock the device. It’s easily one of the most convenient little features we’ve seen on an Android device to date, especially if you find yourself constantly in meetings or just need to turn of notifications to take a quick nap.

The Alert Slider features 3 sound profiles settings — all, priority, or silence —  something you can fine tune and adjust in the Settings app. Priority lets you customize whether or not you want alarms, media, reminders, events, or selected contacts to still trigger audible notifications while in that mode. You can also customize the Silence setting, although you’re only given two options: alarms and media.

We’d definitely recommend playing around with a few of these settings. For instance, you may want to allow calls from your family to still come through, or when someone calls repeatedly within a 15 minute period (in case of emergency).

Have your alarm ring, even if your phone is off

We can’t think of too many instances where you’d want to power down your phone but still have it wake you up with an alarm, but the OnePlus 3 can do just that. Whether you powered your phone down to conserve battery (USB Type C cables aren’t as abundant as micro USB just yet), using the stock Clock app when setting an alarm has a unique “Wake if device is powered off” feature not found on many other devices.

Just expand the alarm options in the app by swiping over to the Alarm tab, and when creating a new alarm (look for the “+” icon at the bottom), you’ll find the option listed among the rest. If you’ve already created an alarm, just tap on the dropdown arrow, to show the available options.

Use a pure black lock screen wallpaper for added battery savings

This is something we recommend for any phone using an AMOLED display and that’s using a solid black wallpaper for the lock screen. Since you’re probably waking your lock screen multiple times a day to check for the time or notifications, it quickly adds up. Using a black lock screen wallpaper helps conserve power because AMOLED doesn’t actually light up blacks on the display. This means it requires much less power and as a result, uses much less battery — that’s a good thing. Here’s how you change the lock screen wallpaper on the OnePlus 3:

Open this image in a new tab, then long press and save it to your device

Note: If you’re using a 3rd party home screen replacement app, you’ll need to go into Settings > Home > and select OnePlus Launcher in order to change the lock screen wallpaper.

  1. Long press a blank area of the OnePlus Launcher (home screen)
  2. Select Wallpapers
  3. Tap on the Lock screen option (left)
  4. Select My photos from the wallpapers selector
  5. Choose the black wallpaper you saved to your device
  6. Press Save located in the upper right corner

Shoot like pro with the OnePlus 3’s various camera functions and shooting modes

Every time you get a new smartphone, you’ll almost always have to get reacquainted with the camera software. Like most other devices these days, the OnePlus 3 offers a variety of settings, shooting modes, and features you’ll want to take advantage of in order to achieve the perfect photo, whatever the occasion.

When you open the app, you’ll find flash, HD, and HDR modes located at the very top. Flash is self-explanatory, while HD is supposed to increase sharpness to help enhance details in your photos although we barely noticed any difference at all. HDR increases the dynamic range of your photo (it mostly lightens dark areas of a photo), but takes a few milliseconds longer from when capturing the photo. This can result in blur, which means you’ll want to remain as still as possible and is better left for shooting landscapes or non-moving subjects.

On the bottom, you’ll find a settings button next to the shutter button that, when tapped, pulls up a bar to change the aspect ratio, self-timer, and toggle grid lines.

The button in the upper left is where you’ll find the different shooting modes which we’ll explain down below:

Switching the the front facing camera (icon located in the lower right corner), you’ll find 2 new features available to you: beauty mode and smile shutter. The beauty mode simply smooths out wrinkles on your face and has slider to adjust the intensity. When activated, the smile shutter (the face icon in the top right corner) will start a 3 second timer when it detects a smile.

Use Screen Pinning to lock guests into a specific app

Your smartphone is full of sensitive information. So what happens when someone needs to use your phone to make a phone call or look something up online? You can hand over your phone and stress out, or you rest easy by taking advantage of a core feature found inside Android. It’s called Screen Pinning and it allows you to lock users down to whichever app you choose. First, you’ll have to enable it:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Select Security & fingerprint
  3. Scroll down and select Screen pinning
  4. Turn it on by tapping on the toggle
  5. Also turn on “Ask for unlock pattern before unpinning“

Once it’s been enabled, you’ll now be able to activate this feature whenever you need to by doing the following:

  1. Open the app you’d like to “pin”
  2. Use the Overview button to open Recent apps
  3. Tap on the pushpin icon in the bottom right corner of the app preview
  4. “Screen is pinned” message will confirm the app has been locked
  5. To unpin the screen/app, touch and hold back + Overview buttons until you’re taken back to the lock screen

Warning: when trying to unpin an app, the message incorrectly tells you to hold only the Overview button, which is false.

Use Android Pay to buy things with your phone, or store membership/loyalty cards

Unlike last year’s model, the OnePlus 3 comes equipped with NFC. This means in addition to connecting with other devices, you can finally use the phone to make mobile payments using Android Pay. All you need to do is set it up and then you’ll be on your way to making purchases using nothing but your smartphone.

From there, all you have to do is find a merchant/restaurant/vending machine that’s compatible with Android Pay, Apple Pay, or Tap to Pay — if you see any of those logos, you’ll be good. You can also find Android Pay supported banks here.

Read More: How to use Android Pay right now

Use Google Now on Tap for an even easier way to search

For some who are upgrading to the OnePlus 3, this could be your first experience with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. While there are a ton of new features found in this version of Android, one of the biggest is something called Google Now on Tap.

Simply long press the home button and Google will scan your screen, providing you with search results based on what’s being displayed. When it works, it’s great, but it’s something you’ll need to experiment with since it can be hit or miss.

  1. While your device is unlocked, press and hold the Home/fingerprint button
  2. Agree to the terms for enabling Now on Tap on your device

Read More: How Google Now on Tap works

Customize which apps and games can send you notifications

Not all notifications are created equal. Although most apps will send a notification when someone messages you, or something needs addressing, others use notifications to pester and spam your notification drawer with meaningless reminders and so forth. Games are perhaps the biggest offenders, sending you hourly/daily notifications reminding you to keep playing (and keep their ad revenues high). But Android gives you full control of your notifications, allowing you to control how and when they’re displayed.

The quickest way to control an app’s notifications is when you actually receive said notification from the app. At that point, simply long press on the notification to see the name of the app that generated it, then press the “i” icon to be taken to the app’s notifications options. There you can disable notifications from whatever app was bothering you, hide the peeking feature, hide notifications from the specific app from showing on your lockscreen — even set the app as a “high priority” notification so you don’t miss it when your phone is in the Priority sound mode.

If you swiped away the notification before you could long press it, don’t worry. Just jump into Settings > Sound & notification > App notifications > Select desired app.

Customize what apps and games can access on your phone using App Permissions

Although they can be annoying, app permissions in Marshmallow are a necessary evil. Apps now ask you, the user, the first time they need permission to access things like your photos, camera, contacts, location, or whatever else.

Whether you accidentally gave access to a permission you shouldn’t have, or you denied something that broke functionality of an app, you can find all the specific permissions of an app and enable or disable them back going into Settings > (app of your choosing) > Permissions.

Keep some apps from being frozen by Doze

In Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google introduced a new feature called “Doze.” It basically puts your Android device into a super low-power state, one that completely freezes apps — and their notifications — but only if you haven’t touched your device in a long time (sitting on a table or your nightstand for instance).

Although you wont find any reference to it in the Settings app — it’s there. By default, Marshmallow “optimizes” all apps with the exception of Google Play Services. If you noticed you’re receiving delayed messages from some of your favorite apps, or perhaps emails aren’t arriving in a timely manner, you can white list apps by going into Settings > Apps > Gear icon > Battery optimization > All apps > Select desired app > Don’t optimize.

You’ll see a little warning that non-optimized apps “may drain your battery more quickly” but that’s standard protocol for this kind of thing. Don’t get too crazy with it, but this should help keep those messages/notifications from your favorite apps coming through in a more timely manner.

Messed something up? Reset preferences for all apps

One of the better features in Android is being able to choose default apps for specific functions on the device. Whether it’s choosing your favorite browser, messaging app, or camera app, Android gives you the power to “complete action using” an app just once, or always — your call.

But what happens when you accidentally make an app the default for a specific action? Don’t worry, you can always reset your app preferences by going into the following:

  1. Open the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select Apps
  3. Find and tap on desired app
  4. Select the option Open by default
  5. Tap on the Clear defaults button at the bottom

You can also go thermonuclear and reset all app preferences (including disabled apps, notifications, default apps, background restrictions, and permission restrictions) by going into: Settings > Apps > 3-dot menu > Reset app preferences > Reset apps.

Play a Flappy Bird clone hidden inside of Android

A few years back, you may remember when a little indie game called Flappy Bird was all the rage. A game that was more difficult than it was fun, it didn’t take long before countless clones could be found in the Google Play Store. In fact, Google released their own version of the classic, but they didn’t offer it on Google Play. Instead, it could be found as an Easter Egg buried inside the Android OS itself — you just had to know how to find it.

The game can still be found hidden inside of Marshmallow, here’s how you can activate it:

  1. Open up the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select About phone
  3. Quickly tap Android version
  4. Long press the giant “Marshmallow” icon (you may have to do this more than once)
  5. Tap the play button to begin playing the game (tap anywhere on the screen to keep the Android in the air)

Delete all user data on your phone and return to factory settings

Whether you’re looking to return your OnePlus 3, or even sell it to a 3rd party, you’re going to want to make sure the phone is wiped clean of all your data. First, make sure to backup photos, SMS, and other important data using the service of your choosing (contacts are already saved to your Google account, so don’t worry about those).

To delete all user data from the OnePlus 3, here are the steps.

Warning: this will erase everything from the phone

  1. Open up the Settings app
  2. Scroll down and select Backup & reset
  3. Select Factory data reset
  4. Confirm by tapping RESET PHONE

Although it’s not mandatory, we also recommend factory resetting your device after a major software update to keep everything running smoothly. This shouldn’t be done every time, just when moving up to major Android versions like Lollipop to Marshmallow, or the upcoming Android N release.

Find (or erase) your lost or stolen phone

It’s something nobody thinks about until it happens, but one of the worst things that could happen to you is having your smartphone lost or stolen. In the event that it does happens, you’ll want to know exactly how to recover your device, or erase any personal information stored therein. Thankfully, Android’s built-in feature called “Android Device Manager” will help you with all of that, you just need to know how to use it.

  1. Go to google.com/android/devicemanager
  2. Select your phone from the drop-down menu
  3. You’ll see the device on a map and a few options for finding it (ring), locking it (if it wasn’t locked already), or erasing all of its contents

Read More: How to find a lost or stolen phone

Customize your phone with our hand-picked wallpapers

Although the OnePlus 3 has a handful of great wallpapers they offer out of the box, you could always use a few more. If you’re looking for some new ones to plaster on your home screen, you may want to check out Phandroid’s Android Wallpaper series. It’s there you’ll find the best wallpapers handpicked by us, usually with a different theme. In fact, our Android Wallpaper for AMOLED displays post features a variety of darker wallpapers perfect for the OnePlus 3 (and it might even bring a little extra battery savings in the process). Here are some of our other favorites:

Download the Best Apps & Games for Android with our curated list

As great as the OnePlus 3 is, it would be pretty boring without a bunch of great apps and games. Here at Phandroid, we are constantly trying to showcase the best apps and games. We’ve published numerous lists for a wide variety of apps and games. Before you dive into the Play Store and blindly look around, check out these lists.

Start here: 100 Best Android Apps of 2016

Join the OnePlus 3 community at AndroidForums.com

We covered a lot of ground here, but we’re only just getting started. There’s always more to learn and sometimes the best place to do it is by chatting it up with others on Android Forums.com. There you’ll find other users and/or prospective buyers sharing their thoughts, experiences, or even concerns they have with the OnePlus 3. It’s the best place to gain some knowledge and although there isn’t much chatter right now, feel free to start your own conversation and get things started in the OnePlus 3 forum.

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