The OnePlus 5 is one of the latest high-end Android smartphones to hit the market. So we thought we’d show you 50+ tips and tricks that you can do with it:
App Shortcuts. First we have app shortcuts. Similar to stock Android, the stock launcher on the OnePlus 5 features app shortcuts. They are only available for select applications, most of which are Google applications but they let you quickly jump to a specific area in that app. All you have to do is long press on the app. Furthermore, you can pin these app shortcuts to your home screen if you want to pin your YouTube subscriptions to your home screen, all you have to do is long press on that shortcut and drag it to an area on your home screen. Now to disable these shortcuts, all you have to do is long press on a blank area of your home screen, go to Settings and uncheck the app shortcuts feature.
Widgets Shelf. If you power on your OnePlus 5 for the first time, you’ll see your shelf off to the left of your home screen. This is a neat tray that holds recent applications, contacts, and other useful information like notes and battery life. What you may not know is that you can actually add Widgets to this screen. Tap on the plus icon in the bottom right hand side of the screen, tap on widget, and then pick the widget you’d like to have here. From here, you can drag and drop to rearrange all the info you see and select the X on the upper right hand corner to delete stuff.
If you don’t like this shelf for whatever reason, you can go to the Settings of your launcher and turn it off; kind of similar to app shortcuts.
Launcher Gestures. This launcher also has Gestures. You can swipe down to reveal your notifications and quick settings, and swipe up to reveal your app drawer. You can do so anywhere on your screen so not just in select areas like traditional launchers.
Icon Shape. In the settings, you can also change your icon shape. There’s the standard OnePlus icons, there are round icons you can choose from and square icons. And you have any third party icon packs, you can use them too, which is awesome. You aren’t able to use third party launchers in the stock Android launcher. In addition, you can go to Settings> Display> Display Size and then change how big or small you want content to appear on your screen.
Battery Icon. While in the Settings, we can make our way to the status bar selection to change the battery icon that appears on the upper right hand corner of the screen. You can select a battery bar, battery circle, or you can even hide it altogether.
Buttons. If we go to Buttons, we’ll find the option to switch between capacitive touch navigation buttons or on screen navigation buttons. I love this feature on the original OnePlus and I love it on the OnePlus 5. And if you decide you want to stick it out with the capacitive buttons, which will free up some precious screen real estate, you can assign special functions to each button. For example, a long press may open up the Google Assistant while a double tap on the home button may open up the Calendar app. You can set these actions for each single button.
And if you don’t like the backlight for your capacitive buttons, you can turn it off and be ultra stealthy. You might even save some battery life.
Recent Button. You can also swap the recent and back buttons around, depending on what works best for you, what is most comfortable for you. I like to have the back button on the left side of my home button. But that’s just me. If you don’t like that, you can change it.
One tap of the recent button will bring up you recent applications where you can long press and drag one to the top of the screen and pick another app to open up beneath it. You can go one step further and program it so that every time you long press the recent button, it will open/close the split screen mode to quickly jump back and forth between multi-tasking and single-tasking. It’s damn cool.
Alert Slider. The OnePlus 5 is unique in that it features an Alert slider. There are three positions: Silent, Do Not Disturb, and Ring. You can customize the Do Not Disturb option in the Settings and allow alerts from certain contacts only.
Reading Mode. In your quick settings, there will be an option to enable reading mode, which will turn everything on you screen black and white; which will be much easier on the eyes. It’s kind of reminiscent of a Kindle. It’s a feature brand new to the OnePlus 5.
And if you don’t want to enable it manually, you can go to display settings and program certain apps to automatically enable reading mode each time they are open. That’s uber cool.
Color Temperature. Also in the display setting, we adjust color temperature. Under Screen Calibration, you’ll see a custom color that you can select and drag a slider to make the screen colder or warmer. Above the custom color option, you can choose SRGB or DCIP, both of which offer different color accuracies that might appeal to you.
Ambient Display. The ambient display feature is nice because it will show you notifications even when the phone is technically asleep. The display is AMOLED 2 so it shouldn’t use up too much power. And if you have it enabled, you can turn on the Lift up Display feature that will do exactly what the name implies. If you lift up your phone, it will activate the ambient display.
Night Mode. The night mode feature will calibrate the display to reduce the amount of blue light emitted to ultimately make the display warmer and easier on your eyes at night. It might even help you sleep better. There’s some Science that backs this up.
Font Size. And if you’re having problems seeing content on your screen, it might be time you adjust the font size in the display settings. Here you can make the font much larger and easier to read. If that doesn’t work, you might want to go to an eye doctor.
Quick Capture. In the buttons section, you can choose to have the camera open when you quickly double press the power button on the side of the OnePlus 5. You can also choose to have the camera take a photo when you double click the power button, open the camera app, open the sidebar menu and hit the settings slider next to quick capture.
Watermark. Also in the Settings is the option to add a watermark to your photos that says “Shot on OnePlus” by BeauHD or your name.
Pro Mode. If we go back to the camera sidebar, we’ll see an option for Pro Mode. This is where you can manually control a bunch of settings like the ISO, shutter speed, and focus. There’s a histogram on by default in the Pro Mode. You can turn it off in the settings under Pro Mode as well. It’s super easy. You might notice a green line when you’re in Pro Mode. This is to alert you that your phone is level. It will be gray if you’re phone is unlevel but it’s something to keep in mind when you use Pro Mode often and it will ultimately result in better, more stable shots.
Immersive Mode. In the camera settings, you can enable or disable immersive mode. Basically, it will clear all the various info that appears on your screen in Pro Mode to help you focus on what it is you’re actually trying to take a picture of or record a video of. You can swipe back and forth to show or hide that information.
Save Presets. If you like a certain collection of settings, you can save them as a preset by tapping the C in the toolbar. From there, you can make your adjustments and tap save C1. You can make multiple presets.
Portrait Mode. Portrait Node is super neat as it will allow you to create ultra milky depth of field shots. It uses both camera sensors on the OnePlus 5 and it can be activated by swiping left on the main camera screen. If you want to save a regular photo each time you take a portrait, you can do so in the camera settings under the portrait section. You’ll see a toggle to let you save a normal photo when you capture a portrait photo.
And while we’re here, we’ll see the option to add grid lines to the camera app. You can select 3x3, 4x4 or a golden ratio grid. In the upper right hand corner of the main camera view, there will be an option to select the image ratio. You can select 4:3, 1:1, or 16:9. In the same spot in the Pro Mode, you can select whether or not you can capture raw images that will have tons of detail.
Rearrange Quick Settings. Let’s take a look at some of the non-camera related features. If you swipe down the notification panel and expand the quick settings, you can tap on the edit icon and then drag and drop and rearrange your quick settings as you see fit. It’s a very useful feature for sure.
OnePlus Gestures. Aside from the launcher gestures, there are OnePlus Gestures like flip to mute, three finger screenshot, double tap to wake, music control, and there are even drawing gestures that you can program to open certain applications when you draw certain shapes on your screen. It’s pretty darn cool.
Long Screenshot. One of my favorite tricks is to take a long screenshot. When you’re on a webpage for example, you can capture all of it by pressing the volume down button and power button together at the same time. Then a row of four actions will pop up at the bottom of the screen. If you tap on the rectangle icon, it will start taking a long screenshot of the page you are on and you can tap the screen to stop the scrolling and complete the screenshot. I wish this feature was available on every Android phone.
If you take a screenshot and press the pencil icon, you can edit the image by changing the color temperature, contrast, and brightness. You can even draw on the image.
Dual SIM Card. The last little tip or trick that I wanted to mention was the fact that this phone features two SIM card slots. So you can have a work and personal line in one device and/or have two different networks running in the same phone. It’s pretty damn cool if you take advantage of it.
With that last one, those are around 50+ tips and tricks for the OnePlus 5. If you know of any that I did not mention, please let us know in the comment section below.
