- Now the bar is a new feature in an IU 7
- More third -party applications would be on the way
- One UI 7 heads for older phones next month
Samsung launched a user interface 7 (its point of view on Android 15) at the same time as the Galaxy S25 flagship products in January, and one of the new key features is the NOW locking bar – a feature that should become much more useful in the near future.
According to the South Korean Outlet and News (via Sammobile), more third -party applications are ready to support the bar now – although there is no specific time for integration. Two South Korean applications are mentioned specifically, Kakao T to reserve taxi routes and NAVER sports for live sports scores.
Presumably, these efforts to add more third -party applications will extend internationally, although and news does not name others. The more the applications support the bar now, the more useful it becomes, which means that more users will benefit from it.
Samsung has pushed the bar now as a major innovation in One UI 7, and we also described it as one of the best features of the software. This is essentially the vision of the live activities of Samsung on iOS, displaying useful information from applications directly on the locking screen, which can be updated in real time.
Use the bar now
If you have a Samsung Galaxy S25, you already have an IU 7 – and the bar now probably already appears at the bottom of your locking screen, displaying widgets for timer, the now brief summary, media reading, etc.
Head for the settings and choose Lock screen and AOD to find it Now bar page. You will see that you can define the applications that applications appear in the bar now from here: currently, the list is dominated by Samsung and Google Apps, which is why third -party applications would be welcome in the future.
Google Maps is an application that has recently added the bar care now, so you can see the rotating directions on the lock screen. Android already offers persistent notifications for this type of information in real time, but the bar now facilitates going to a locked phone.
We are still waiting for an IU 7 to go to the Samsung handsets beyond the Galaxy S25 series, although the deployment should start next month. It is not clear at the moment how a phone you will need to take advantage of the bar functionality now, but we should soon get some clarity on this subject.
