Android now allows you to customize the shortcuts that appear in your Quick Settings panel and the icons that appear on your status bar. This is part of the hidden “System UI Tuner” screen, added in Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Google will probably add more features to the System UI Tuner in future versions of Android. It’s hidden, so you’ll never find it without someone telling you where it is — just like the Developer Options screen and Android’s hidden Easter egg.
Enable System UI Tuner
To enable the System UI Tuner, pull down the notification shade at the top of your Android smartphone or tablet’s screen. Long-press the gear icon that appears between the battery indicator and your profile image for about five seconds. Just hold it down until it begins to spin. A notification saying “Congrats! System UI Tuner has been added to Settings.”
Access the System UI Tuner
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This is a new settings screen that will appear in Android’s system-wide settings app. To access it, open the app drawer and tap the “Settings” app icon. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen — you’ll see a new “System UI Tuner” option appear under About phone or About tablet. Tap it to access the formerly hidden options.
Open the System UI Tuner screen and Google warns you that these options are “Fun for some but not for all.” As Google puts it, “these experimental features may change, break or disappear in future releases. Proceed with caution.”
In a sense, this is like the chrome://flags interface in Chrome — both on Android and on desktop platforms. While the Developer Options screen hides options intended for developers, the System UI Tuner screen hides options intended for Android power users and tweakers.
Customize Your Quick Settings Tiles and Status Bar Icons
In the System UI Tuner’s initial release in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, there are just a few options here. You can customize the Quick Settings panel that appears along with your notifications when you pull down from the top of the screen, control what appears in the status bar, show battery percentage on the battery icon in the status bar, and enable a “Demo mode.”
The Quick Settings screen allows you to rearrange the tiles that appear here, remove tiles you don’t want to see, and add other tiles. You can also tap the menu button and tap “Reset” to restore the tiles to their default state if you decide you don’t like your customizations.
The Status bar screen allows you to hide certain icons from your status bar. You can choose to hide the Cast, Hotspot, Bluetooth, Do not disturb, Alarm, Work profile, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Cellular data, and Airplane mode icons so they don’t clutter up your status bar.
The “Show embedded battery percentage” option modifies the battery icon that appears in that status bar. When not charging, the current battery percentage will be shown inside the battery icon so you don’t have to guess at it or pull up the notification panel to see the exact percentage.
You can also choose to enable “Demo mode.” In demo mode, the status bar is cleaned up and shows no notifications, a full battery, full Wi-Fi and cellular signal strength, and the time is always set to 6:00. This is just a visual trick — disable demo mode and all your notifications will still be there.
More options should appear here in the future, and Google may remove some of the current options. It’s a bit like about:flags in Chrome, but Google doesn’t seem to be testing out new features — they’re just giving users more options that Android’s developers haven’t figured out how to integrate into the normal settings interface yet.
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