I have exclusively used Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Note, S and Z lineup and always had Edge Panel enabled on all my phones. Except I never bothered to explore it and kept adding all my frequently accessed apps to the home screen.
This changed when my wife, who uses an iPhone, started borrowing my phone occasionally to use a few apps. She needed quick access without having to hunt through the app drawer, and I didn’t want to clutter my home screen with apps I rarely use. Edge Panel was the perfect solution, but as I started exploring it, I realized it’s far more versatile than I expected. Now, I use it every day.
Setting up the Edge Panel
You can enable it in the Settings app
Edge Panel is Samsung’s quick-access sidebar that lives on the edge of your screen. You can swipe it open to access apps, tools, and shortcuts without leaving whatever you’re doing. It became an integrated part of Samsung phones when the company released the first iteration of One UI in 2018. Which means, even if you have an older Samsung phone, chances are you can enable it on your device.
Edge Panel is an optional feature, so it’s likely disabled by default on your phone. To turn it on, go to Settings > Display > Edge panels and then set it to On. Now, a small handle will appear on the side of your screen.
Tap the Handle option to change the position from left to right, change the handle color, and customize the transparency, size, and width of the handle for better control. I personally keep mine at about 50% transparent and slightly bigger than the default because it’s easier to grab with my thumb.
Configuring the Edge Panel
Add or remove apps
By default, Edge Panel shows a few built-in apps like the Galaxy AI tools, gallery app, and others. However, you can customize it to include almost any app you want quick access to.
For example, a 2FA authenticator, your payment app like Google Wallet, Slack to check quick messages, or a sports news app. Anything that needs quick access but you don’t want to have on your home screen or want to access from the Lock Screen should go into the Edge Panel.
To add an app, swipe in from the edge to open Edge Panel. Then, tap the Edit (pencil icon) to open the panel editor. Drag and drop the app onto the panel to add it. Similarly, tap the red minus icon on the app to remove it from the panel.
Samsung makes it a bit tricky to remove the built-in apps as they are grayed out in the panel editor, but you can hide them easily. In the panel editor, tap the three dots in the top right corner, then uncheck all the Galaxy AI apps to remove them.
Edge Panel is not only for apps
You can use it as a speed dialer, a clipboard manager, and even a compass
The Edge Panel is more than just an app launcher—though it can replace your app drawer if needed. Open the Edge Panel, tap the 6-dot square icon, and it’ll open the full app drawer with a search bar.
However, there’s more to the Edge Panel than apps. You can turn it into a contacts, tasks, weather, and tools panel or even a clipboard manager. I didn’t even know I could add more than just apps to the edge of my screen, but in my defense, I never paid much attention to what else it can do.
To add more panels, head to Settings > Display > Edge panels > Panels. Now select all the panels that you want to add. For instance, you can add a contacts panel to quickly access your frequently used contacts, or add a tasks panel if you frequently take screenshots, add reminders, or create new contacts.
For my workflow, I have added the Apps, Clipboard, Compass and Reminder panels. You can add one or add all the panels, though I’d suggest keeping it to three or four to avoid clutter. To switch between these panels, open Edge Panel, then swipe left or right to switch from the Apps panel to the Contacts panel and so on.
If you use split view for multi-tasking with specific apps, you can save the app pair to the Edge Panel. Once you set up your favorite split-screen combination, save it, and you can launch both apps together with one tap. You can also create folders in the Edge Panel to group similar apps together, which helps keep things organized when you have a lot of apps added.
Edge Panel deserves more recognition
Getting started with Edge Panel can be a bit tricky, as you need to learn a new action to open and access apps from the panel. However, once you get the hang of it, it’s a surprisingly intuitive experience. After a few weeks, I naturally reach for Edge Panel when I need to open frequently used apps, contacts, and even the clipboard manager.
Samsung gets a lot of flak for its gimmicky features. However, over the years, it has tried to create an app ecosystem of its own, and for the most part, it has done a fabulous job. Edge Panel is one such feature that may appear to be a gimmick at first, but it’s a quality-of-life improvement that makes it a tad easier to use my phone.