One of the most impressive features in One UI 7.0 is the Now Bar. It is a completely new UI element that showcases ongoing activities on the phone and appears on the lock screen. However, Now Bar is currently compatible only with a few stock apps. Let’s have a closer look at it.
Now Bar is a gorgeous-looking feature in One UI 7
The Now Bar on One UI 7.0 displays ongoing activities, like music playback and an active timer, on Galaxy phones. It is compatible with the following apps and activities:
- Bixby
- Clock (stopwatch and timer)
- Emergency Sharing
- Interpreter
- Maps
- Samsung Health
- Samsung Notes
- Voice Recorder
It is a pill-shaped UI element that first appears on the left side of the status bar at the top of the screen with related controls (pause, stop, etc). When you click it, it maximizes to a pill-shaped bar at the top of the screen. When you lock the phone’s screen, the Now Bar appears at the bottom of the lock screen.
You can watch it in action in our in-depth video below.
When you play audio or video, the Now Bar appears with album art and music playback controls (previous track, play/pause, and next track). When you click the music playback Now Bar on the lock screen, it shows additional information along with a bigger album art in the middle of the screen and a media output switcher. You can see that in our images below.
When multiple ongoing videos are present, the Now Bar widgets for each activity are stacked on top of each other, and you can cycle between them by flicking those widgets up or down.
There is even a Now Bar that appears on the lock screen when you connect your phone to a charger. It displays the charging speed, the remaining time for a full charge, and the current charge level. The Now Bar for charging also acts as a progress bar, as the color filled up in the pill-shaped element corresponds to the current battery charge level.
The Now Bar currently only works with some stock Samsung apps and system services, but we hope Samsung will support third-party apps with Android 16 and One UI 8.0. A previous report indicated that Google is internally working on an iOS-like Live Activities feature for Android 16, which could be integrated into the Now Bar for One UI.