When you buy a Samsung phone, it’s as much for One UI as it is for the hardware. And Samsung takes that further with a set of standalone apps built for the niche workflows that One UI itself doesn’t handle.

For instance, if you prefer to use your phone one-handed, Samsung has One Hand Operation Plus that adds custom gesture shortcuts to the edges of your screen. Sound Assistant is another app that lets you fine-tune the volume for each app, if you prefer to run two apps with audio at the same time. These are just two of the many Samsung phone apps that you’ve probably never heard of, but might find useful.

Samsung Good Guardians

A performance toolkit hiding in the Galaxy Store

Samsung does offer some performance optimization features on its phones, but Good Guardians takes it a notch above. It’s a collection of performance and maintenance tools that goes much deeper than what you’ll find in Settings > Device care.

The standout for me is Thermal Guardian. It lets you track your phone’s temperature in real time and adjust the thermal threshold, so you can decide whether you want the phone to prioritize performance or run cooler. If you’ve ever noticed your phone throttling during a long gaming session, this feature can help you keep it in check.

Then there’s Battery Tracker, which breaks down battery usage by app over the past day or week, far more granular than Samsung’s built-in stats. Galaxy App Booster is another one worth enabling. It recompiles your installed apps to run more efficiently, and while the speed gains are subtle, they add up after a reboot.

Note: Good Guardians is only available in select regions including the US, Europe, South Korea, and China through the Galaxy Store.

Samsung Flow

Phone Link, but Samsung’s way

If Samsung were the only company making Android phones, Samsung Flow would be what you have instead of Phone Link. It connects your Galaxy phone to a Galaxy tablet or Windows PC over Wi-Fi, and it does a few things that Microsoft’s solution doesn’t.

I can drag-and-drop file transfers between my phone and tablet. Press and hold a photo, drag it to the other device, and it copies over in under a second. You also get notification syncing and a quick messaging feature for sending files between devices.

The real party trick is screen mirroring. Flow mirrors your entire phone screen onto the tablet or PC with working touch controls and the option to turn your phone’s display off while it mirrors.

On the flip side, you can only connect one device at a time, drag-and-drop only works phone-to-tablet (not phone-to-PC), and there’s no Mac version.

Samsung Expert RAW

Pro camera controls for Galaxy shooters

Samsung already has one of the best cameras in the smartphone market, so it’s no surprise that they also have a dedicated camera app for the more serious photographers. Expert RAW gives you full manual control over shutter speed, ISO, white balance, and focus across all your phone’s lenses, including the telephoto and ultra-wide.

The big difference compared to the built-in Pro mode is that Expert RAW shoots in 16-bit Linear DNG format alongside your regular JPEG. That means you get a RAW file with far more data to work with in apps like Adobe Lightroom, and the photos have improved quality with none of the over-sharpening that Samsung’s stock processing tends to apply.

There are trade-offs, though. RAW files run 20MB or more per shot, so they eat through storage quickly, and the app isn’t great for fast-moving subjects. But if you edit photos after the fact, Expert RAW gives you far more flexibility than the standard camera app ever will.

Samsung Home Up

The Good Lock module that replaced my launcher

I never expected to stick with Samsung’s stock launcher. For years, I bounced between third-party launchers for more flexibility. But Home Up, a module inside Samsung’s Good Lock app, can enhance the usability of One UI to a great extent.

Home Up lets you customize the home screen grid size from 4 to 7 rows and columns, hide the favorites dock, or turn on DIY mode to freely resize, rotate, and reposition widgets and icons anywhere on the screen.

What’s more, you can adjust folder grid sizes and use Large Folders, which show a bigger preview of the apps inside and let you scroll through them without opening the folder. Beyond the home screen, Home Up also covers the Recents screen, Edge Panel, share sheet, and gestures, making it one of the most versatile Good Lock modules.

Samsung Sound Assistant

Per-app volume control that Android should have built in

Android’s volume controls have always been a bit clunky. You get separate sliders for media, ringtone, alarm, and notification, but what if you want Spotify loud while keeping YouTube quiet? That’s where Sound Assistant comes in.

Part of Samsung’s Good Lock suite, Sound Assistant gives each app its own independent volume slider. Set Spotify to 80%, YouTube to 40%, and Instagram to zero, and they all stay where you put them. It also lets multiple apps play audio at the same time without pausing each other, which stock Android doesn’t do.

You can also customize the volume slider’s look, set finer volume steps, and change the volume rocker’s default behavior so it controls media instead of the ringtone. Useful for anyone who has accidentally blasted music through their headphones while trying to lower the ringer; I know the pain.

My only gripe is that it’s exclusive to Samsung through Good Lock, and I wish Google would build something similar into stock Android.

One Hand Operation Plus

Gesture shortcuts for phones too big for one hand

Phones keep getting bigger, but my hands haven’t. One Hand Operation Plus solves that by letting you create small custom touch zones, called handles, on the edge of your screen. Map these handles to actions like back, Home, recent apps, pop-up window, or media track controls, and you can use your phone one-handed without stretching across the display.

It also works rather nicely with One UI’s predictive back gesture. In the module’s advanced settings, a system back gesture toggle extends gesture control outside your custom handle zone. When turned on, swiping anywhere off the handle triggers predictive back navigation, while your handles still work inside their own area. You get both custom one-handed shortcuts and full-screen predictive back at once.

Again, there’s a caveat. The predictive back gesture needs to be enabled system-wide in Labs, and the system back gesture option inside One Hand Operation Plus also needs to be on. If either is off, you get a normal back gesture instead.

Samsung’s best apps aren’t preinstalled on the phone

That’s the one thing all six of these apps share. None of them are preinstalled, and Samsung doesn’t exactly advertise them. You have to know they exist and go to the Galaxy Store yourself. It’s a strange approach for a company that packs so many features into its phones out of the box, but it also means these tools stay out of the way for people who don’t need them. For those who do, they fill gaps that even Google hasn’t addressed in stock Android, and they’re all free.