{"id":100690,"date":"2025-05-14T11:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100690\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T11:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T11:50:10","slug":"i-tried-samsungs-diy-home-feature-in-one-ui-7-and-i-wish-i-hadnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100690\/","title":{"rendered":"I tried Samsung’s DIY Home feature in One UI 7, and I wish I hadn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Samsung<\/p>\n

Ryan Haines \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

Customization has always been Samsung\u2019s bread and butter. Above all else, it\u2019s the reason I steer people towards Galaxy devices \u2014 yes, even more than flexible cameras, excellent build quality, and reliable software updates. There\u2019s something about an Android phone you can make truly your own that feels right. And, when Apple\u2019s approach to customization on iOS<\/a> was to force every app to the top of your display, the choice couldn\u2019t have been easier.<\/p>\n

Now, though, Samsung has gone too far to the dark side. It\u2019s thrown out the fragile rules that keep Android home screens organized in favor of adopting true anarchy. I opened my Galaxy S25 up to try DIY Home in One UI 7<\/a>, and I fear I\u2019ve lost all sense of organization. Here\u2019s where it all went wrong.<\/p>\n

Have you tried to customize your phone with Samsung’s DIY Home?<\/p>\n

13 votes<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s so easy<\/p>\n

62%<\/p>\n

No, absolutely not<\/p>\n

38%<\/p>\n

What works for me might not for you, and that\u2019s okay<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/p>\n

Ryan Haines \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

I explored DIY Home, knowing that it would probably challenge my usual One UI preferences. I mean, I tend to keep a pretty minimalist home screen, so any settings panel that requires me to install Good Lock<\/a>, download a module, and then rework my layout feels, well, maximalist. But that\u2019s precisely what I did in the name of customization.<\/p>\n

At first, everything seemed\u2026 okay. I didn\u2019t mind dragging and dropping an app here or there, and I liked that I could make certain folders larger than others, similar to what Nothing has implemented on its Nothing OS<\/a>. I dragged a few extra apps over to the right side of my screen, making them much easier to reach with my right thumb, and I shifted less-used elements like the weather widget and Now Bar over to the left.<\/p>\n

If you let food touch on your plate, you might be okay with DIY Home. I wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Then, chaos ensued. You may not know this about me (in fact, why would you?), but I don\u2019t love it when food touches on my plate \u2014 especially at Thanksgiving. Even though I like each element separately, they all have their own places and distinct flavors, and I\u2019d much rather keep it that way. I\u2019m not this picky in all aspects of my daily life, but as it turns out, I definitely am with my phone.<\/p>\n

As you can probably imagine, the second I let go of an app too early and it touched another, I was all the way out on DIY Home. There\u2019s just no chance I\u2019d be okay with a home screen where Slack and Instagram could sit right on top of each other, practically daring me to doomscroll and waste the rest of my workday. Yet, that\u2019s what DIY Home dared me to do.<\/p>\n

Just because you can, doesn\u2019t mean you should<\/p>\n

\"Samsung<\/p>\n

Ryan Haines \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n

After a short stretch with DIY Home \u2014 no more than a few hours \u2014 I pulled the plug. Dr. Ian Malcolm\u2019s words echoed through my head as I did so: \u201cYour scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn\u2019t stop to think if they should,\u201d and he was right to question my intentions. But, I had seen colleagues come up with chaotic layouts, and strangers on Reddit<\/a> had created beautiful layouts that broke my brain just a little bit, so you can\u2019t fault me for wanting to try it.<\/p>\n

However, as I tossed the famous Jurassic Park quote back and forth in my head, trying to balance it with Samsung\u2019s actual implementation, I found myself siding more and more with Dr. Malcolm. Although Samsung has always favored customization, it\u2019s also kept reasonable ground rules in place. It let you fine-tune your own grid, but it did so while keeping that grid in place.<\/p>\n

To me, home screens should be functional rather than exciting. They’re the gateway to what makes phones fun.<\/p>\n

With DIY Home, though, all of those rules are off. You can drag and drop apps and widgets like I did, but you can also add emoji stickers, freeform doodles, and text boxes to your layout. Do any of these things do, well, anything? No, they\u2019re purely decorative. However, they can add to the overall clutter of your layout and, at least to me, make everything a little bit harder to find.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are exactly two groups of people who make me a little nervous about the power of DIY Home: My grandparents and people with young kids. On the one hand, I\u2019m already the de facto Geek Squad for my grandma and grandpa, so I know how easily they stumble into settings I never would have found. I know it would take just one phone call about misplacing an app for me to spring into action and try to fix things.<\/p>\n

Conversely, there\u2019s no easier way to pacify a little one than to give them a screen to play with. I\u2019ve seen it work with my nephew, and I\u2019ve been endlessly relieved that my phone isn\u2019t the one picking up those fingerprints. However, just like my grandparents, I know my cousin wouldn\u2019t love it if his son stacked up all his apps and doodled on them, causing him to reset the DIY Home layout he might have previously created.<\/p>\n

But hey, if you\u2019re the only one who ever touches your phone and have the time and attention to make the perfect DIY Home layout, then I think you should experiment. I think you should try to create an artsy, if impractical, home screen layout, and I would love to see what you come up with. I\u2019m happy to be proven wrong by the more creative Samsung users, even while my DIY Home toggle remains set firmly to Off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Haines \/ Android Authority Customization has always been Samsung\u2019s bread and butter. Above all else, it\u2019s the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3159],"tags":[2061,547,542,14665,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-100690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-android","9":"tag-mobile","10":"tag-samsung","11":"tag-samsung-one-ui","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114506041111874322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}