One UI 8 improves Now Bar on Galaxy Z Flip’s cover screen

We recently went hands-on with One UI 8.0 on multiple devices, but couldn't find many drastic changes. There are minor UI design changes, and they include the Now Bar, which now has a standard UI design on the cover screen of Galaxy Z Flip series phones.

It now matches the UI of Now Bar on the main screen.

The Now Bar kind of existed on the cover screen of Galaxy Z Flip devices for a few years now. However, it wasn't as functional as it is on the main screen on devices running One UI 7.0. It only displayed an ongoing activity and tapping it took users to the related app or widget. With One UI 8.0, the Now Bar on the cover screen shows all the controls, such as play/pause for the media player widget.

You can see a side-by-side comparison of the Now Bar design on One UI 7.0 (left) and One UI 8.0 (right) in the image gallery below.

As you can see above, the media player in the Now Bar has controls for previous track, play/pause, and next track on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 running One UI 8.0. In comparison, the Now Bar just displays media playback animation, and tapping it takes you to the media player widget.

Watch what else One UI 8.0 brings to Galaxy Z Flip series devices in our hands-on video below.

The new Now Bar design on the cover screen now matches the Now Bar design that is available on the main display. So, Samsung seems to have standardized its UI design across screens and devices. Right now, the Now Bar is broken for things like Interpreter, Stopwatch, Timer, and Voice Recoder, so we can't display those yet. You can see this post on X to see how other things on the Now Bar appear in One UI 8.0.

One UI 8.0 brings subtle improvements to the UI design language in stock apps. The company seems to be working on translucency effects for certain menus inside those apps. Samsung Internet will get a massive redesign, which has leaked already. Samsung will also raise RAM Plus limit to cross 8GB.