Samsung Good Lock’s newest function promised freedom, delivered chaos

When Samsung began overhauling Good Lock for One UI 7, Residence Up was one of many modules that noticed the most important adjustments. Most of these adjustments had been good, letting you modify edge panels, the taskbar (on Folds and tablets), the overview display, and the house display itself. As welcome as these options are, I discovered one of many additions more durable to understand. DIY Residence has a number of potential, however regardless of the splendidly terrible house screens you may create with it, the implementation is flawed and jogs my memory of the worst days of Microsoft’s Home windows experiments.

DIY Residence removes all the guardrails normally positioned on house display customisation. Grid, icon, and widget sizes are unrestricted, and you may put every part, all over the place, . On the floor, that sounds fairly cool. Shifting each factor to precisely the place you need it with none restrictions may result in some cool setups and perhaps a renaissance of the previous customized launcher days. I initially hoped for that, however it hasn’t labored out. The way in which DIY Residence has been carried out is sort of unusable, and I can’t carry myself to make use of it for any longer than is required.

Lengthy-press on an empty area on your private home display or pinch out, and a brand new DIY Residence button seems within the prime proper of the display. When you’re within the DIY editor, you may transfer icons and widgets freely with none limitation, resize and rotate them, and add stickers, emojis, and textual content.

The controls are, in a manner, too easy. Even on my S24 Extremely, which is realistically the most important display most individuals will do this with, there isn’t sufficient room to maneuver issues exactly together with your finger. It wants a motion slider or arrow keys, just like the widget creator in KWGT.

One other challenge is the alignment presets, that are all unlabelled, so it’s a must to press them to determine what they do. By then, all the icons you’ve chosen are on prime of each other in some incoherent mess that appears prefer it belongs in John Carpenter’s The Factor. Icon manipulation can be inconsistent. Typically tapping on a brand new icon and dragging it whereas a unique one is already chosen will clear that choice and solely transfer the brand new one, whereas different instances it’ll transfer each or neither.

Utilizing DIY House is like making an attempt to play chess towards an opponent who cheats, adjustments the principles, and flips the board when you begin profitable. It’s irritating and complicated, and it practically drove me to throw my cellphone at a wall.

The reply to that one is perhaps. I undoubtedly can’t; the screenshot above is the perfect I may do after practically an hour of messing with it. Maybe when you’re extra affected person or artistic, you may squeeze a pleasant house display out of DIY Residence, however I feel that effort can be higher spent on Nova Launcher or KWGT. My colleague Ryan Haines agrees, too, saying he needs he hadn’t even tried DIY Residence.

I feel Samsung’s efforts can be higher spent elsewhere, too. One UI 7 launched the vertical app drawer many people needed, however many customers, together with my spouse, most well-liked the paginated horizontal format. The choice to revert to that, together with extra blur and background shade choices, can be extra helpful than this.

In 1995, Microsoft launched Microsoft BOB, which was meant to make navigating Home windows extra intuitive. It didn’t. As a substitute, it was an incomprehensible mess, simply as most DIY Residence creations are, and except Samsung can overhaul it into one thing extra usable, it’s finest forgotten.

Do you want DIY Residence, or do you suppose different options can be a greater use of Samsung’s (and our) time? Tell us within the feedback.