One UI 7’s Now Bar has a weird placement on affordable phones

Samsung’s Android 15-based One UI 7.0 brings many new features. One of them is Now Bar. It is a small widget for the lock screen that shows status of ongoing activities, such as stopwatch, timer, music playback, and food delivery tracking. This feature allows you to keep a tab on time-critical and important things without unlocking the device.

We have experienced Now Bar on the Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S25. On both the lineups, it appears at the bottom of the screen, between the quick-launch shortcuts and below the fingerprint scanner, and that looks neat. However, its placement on more affordable Samsung phones is different, which is making it look weird.

On Reddit, a user has pointed out that on Samsung's newly launched Galaxy A56, the Now Bar appears well above the bottom portion of the display and above the fingerprint scanner. In that position on the lock screen, the widget is not only looking out of place but also wastes a lot of screen real estate. You can check it out in the image below.

Why the different placement?

The Galaxy S24 and the Galaxy S25 have ultrasonic fingerprint scanners. The area on the screen where they recognise the fingerprint is slightly above the bottom of the display. It leaves enough space for the Now Bar to appear at the bottom of the screen.

On the other hand, many mid-range and low-end Samsung phones have an optical fingerprint scanner. Usually, it is located behind the bottom-most portion of the screen. As such, the fingerprint animation appears at the bottom-most part of the display.

As there’s no space for One UI 7.0 to show Now Bar on the bottom of the screen on these devices, it is showing the widget above the fingerprint scanner. In that position, it looks out of place and renders a lot of space on the lock screen useless.

One UI 7.0 lets you disable Now Bar

Fortunately, Samsung gives you an option to turn off Now Bar, which is helpful for people who prefer not to see the widget due to its aesthetics and ergonomics. You can disable it by going to Settings » Lock Screen and AOD » Now bar.

Fortunately, that isn't the case on Samsung phones with side-mounted fingerprint scanner, such as the Galaxy A26 and the Galaxy A06 5G. On those devices, One UI 7 will show Now Bar at the bottom-most position of the screen.

Image Credit – Reddit

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