Edge Panels give you quick access to your favorite apps, contacts, tools, and more from any screen at any time on your Galaxy S9. In this video, I’m going to show you how to access the Edge Panels and how to customize them to fit your needs.
Let’s take a look at how to use the edge panels on your Galaxy S9 and S9+. Now, by default, whenever you first launch your device, you’re going to see this nice little handle over here on the right-hand side of the screen. Swipe that out, and we’re given access to our apps edge and all of our other edge panels. I have Smart Select, I have apps edge and then My people edge and these are all the panels that are in here by default. Now, you can quickly jump into the edge panel settings by tapping on the settings icon on the bottom left-hand corner from anyone of your edge panels. This will jump you into the setting for the current panel that you’re on and then you can also come on the top left-hand corner, tap that arrow, and it brings you back to the edge screen where you have the option of turning the edge panels on or off as well as your edge lighting. We’ll soldier into the edge lighting a little bit later.
You can also access the edge panels by coming into your settings and then going down to your actual display, and then coming down until you see the edge screen. Then all you have to do is tap on edge panels and we can customize all the panels that we have. By default, we have Apps Edge, People, and Smart Select and I can go ahead and toggle on a few different edge panels that I would like to just by tapping on the check mark in the top of the panel itself. Notice that I am limited to only nine panels at one time. So, if I wanted to add more than that, I’m going to have to disable some of these ones that I’ve added and then choose which ones I wanted to add. Some of these are a little bit more useful than others, I find, so just go ahead and choose which panels you want. Now, if I actually open up the edge panel, notice I do have all those different edge panels that I’ve added back there in the settings menu.
You’ll notice in the top right-hand corner I can actually turn the edge panels on or off. If I actually turn it off, you’ll notice if I go to the home screen, that actual edge panel is no longer there and trying to swipe over it doesn’t open it anymore. I will need to go back into my settings and then turn that back on for this to make any sense. Now, what I can also do is in the top right-hand corner, tap those three little dots and I can reorder the panels. If I wanted my People edge to be the first one, just go ahead and drag it over until it’s the first one. I can also move whichever ones I want in any specific order that I want them to be in. I can also tap up there and uninstall any edge panels that I’ve actually downloaded. So if I didn’t want the Music one anymore, I’ll go ahead and uninstall it. Same thing with the Sports and More, if I wanted to I can go ahead and uninstall that.
Then I can also tap up there, and I have my edge panel Handle, which is what we’re actually using to access the edge panel from our home screen. Well, you can choose for it to be on the right or left-hand side of the screen. We can access if from any screen if we wanted to. We can even move it into a preferred position. I kind of like mine here where my thumb naturally rests on the phone. I’m going to change it to be a little bit larger than normal and I’m going to give it a little bit of higher transparency. Then you see this adjust on the right-hand side of the screen where I’ve positioned the edge panel Handle. Now, what I can do, is I can access my edge panel from anywhere on my device by swiping over where I set it up at.
Now what’s also nice, is some of these panels actually allow me to edit what’s on there. For example, the Apps edge and People edge, you see that I can actually edit the content that’s on there. If I tap on the Apps edge, I’ll tap Edit. This is going to show me all of the apps that are on my device and I can actually add them over here into the Apps edge. For example, tap and hold on Facebook, and I can drag it anywhere on the edge panel that I want to. Same goes for Instagram, I’ll go ahead and do that. And then, I happen to prefer Phoenix for Twitter, so you see I’m adding in all of my favorite apps over here on the edge panel itself. You might have also noticed at the top that I can actually create an app pairing. Now, what this will allow me to do is actually launch two applications in split-screen mode directly from the Apps edge.
I’m going to go ahead and create an app pairing. It’s going to show me all of the multi-window apps that are supported. For this example, let’s just say I wanted to launch Google Chrome, which I’ll tap on Chrome, and then I’m also going to launch my email so I’ll tap on Gmail. I can switch the order so if I want Gmail on top, Gmail will appear on top of the screen and Chrome on the bottom. The same thing if I switch it back, Chrome will appear on top and then Gmail will appear on the bottom. Tap on Done, my app pairing is created and notice it’s automatically been added to the empty position on my Apps edge. Now, it’s cool, I can open up my Apps panel, here’s my Apps edge, I can quickly launch any one of these applications by tapping on it and then I can also launch that app pairing. Notice that Chrome was on the top and then Gmail is down below. We can also adjust our People, so we can tap on edit and add more people to our shortcuts over here on the right-hand side of the screen.
If I wanted to download some new edge panels, all I have to do is tap on the download, it’s going to open up the Samsung Store and then I can go ahead and purchase or download free edge panels to add to my device. You’ll notice that some of them are paid, so this edge lighting one, for example is $2.00, but if I swipe over, I’m going to see this calculator panel is a free one and I can see the price listed below each one of the titles for the edge panels. I can also filter at the top of the screen by top paid, top free, and also new. Now, one other option for our edge panels is if we come back into our settings, we do have edge lighting. Now, edge lighting will light up the edge of the screen, you see this nice little animation here showing us how it’s going to work. I can always have it on when the screen if off or when the screen is on so it’s user option there and I can choose my lighting style.
Right now, I have a basic effect and it is showing on my screen. I can actually choose the effect here so I want multi-color, a glow, or a glitter. You can kind of see how it’s showing here on the screen now. I can change the color, choose a custom color, even choose a transparency and then choose a width. So, if I wanted it to be really predominant, I can change it to wide. We’ll change our effect now and you see that effect is applying with each one of these that I choose. So, I’m going to tap apply, it’s going to save the edge lighting and then I can choose to manage notifications for which specific app I want to have the edge lighting show up on. If I want it to show up for all applications whenever I get a notification from any application, my edge will light up. Or, I can toggle that off and choose specific applications to show up on the edge lighting. Notice they do have suggested apps at the top such as messages, so that one’s on by default and you can choose any other application you want as well.
That is how you use your edge panels and edge lighting on your Galaxy S9 and S9+. If you found this video useful, be sure and give it a thumbs up. For more videos like this, be sure and subscribe to State of Tech and we’ll see you in the next one.
Make sure to check out our other Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ Quick Tip Videos.
