Here are all of the ways Samsung’s One UI 7 update copies iOS [Gallery]

Ben Schoon | Dec 8 2024 - 9:00 am PT

Samsung’s One UI 7 update is huge and, for the most part, pretty good, but there’s some clear influence throughout as Samsung has seemingly been trying to replicate a bunch of features and design traits from iOS. Here’s a list of all of the ways Samsung’s Android 15 update tries to copy iOS.

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‘Now Bar’ and ‘Live Notifications’

One of the very obvious ways that Samsung’s One UI 7 update is mimicking iOS is in the update’s new Dynamic Island clones, and there are two of them.

On the lockscreen, there’s the “Now Bar,” which shows ongoing tasks such as stopwatches, timers, music, and more. Meanwhile, “Live Notifications” inside can also show ongoing tasks in the status bar, with a tap revealing additional controls. When music is playing, the UI similarities are especially egregious as seen below and also on 9to5Mac.

While the placement is different, these are going after the same functionality as the Dynamic Island, which is a welcome addition! Unfortunately, though, Samsung’s version of this doesn’t integrate with third-party apps (at least not yet), leaving the utility questionable.

App icon sizes, widget names

iOS 18 was a big update for homescreen customization, with Apple finally giving users further customizations over app icons and more, and Samsung now copied the ones that it was missing. Users can now show a name on widgets, just like iOS does, as well as being able to turn off app names and change the size of app icons, just like Apple introduced in iOS 18.

Redesigned multitasking page

One of the most explicit copies in One UI 7 is the multitasking page, which is nearly identical to what you’ll find in iOS.

New battery icon

Meanwhile, Samsung has also adopted a new battery icon which looks a lot like Apple’s. There’s even a new charging animation in which the icon turns green when the device is connected to a charger.

Separated notification tray and Quick Settings

Finally, Samsung introduced a split notification tray and Quick Settings tray in One UI 7. This leaves the two functioning more like iOS, with a swipe down from the top left revealing notifications, and from the top right revealing Quick Settings.

This is something that’s been adopted by a lot of Android manufacturers recently, but it’s exactly what Apple has been doing for several years at this point.

Thankfully, Samsung leaves it fully optional.

While a lot of these changes are pretty clearly inspired by iOS, Samsung’s update as a whole has a lot of welcome changes that aren’t coming from “the fruit company.” And, in many cases, the changes Samsung have made that do follow iOS are arguably for the better anyway.

What do you think of One UI 7?

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Top comment by MarcoOT

Liked by 36 people

The redesigned multitasking experience was introduced in OneUI years ago through GoodLock among other options.

But hey, it turns out that now Apple has something similar and so it's Samsung that copied

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