I have long wished I could hide the status bar on my phone. You know, that row of icons going across the top of the screen? Well, it turns out I can, and so can you—if you also happen to have a Samsung Galaxy phone.
First, You Need Good Lock
Good Lock is an app that lets you configure and customize virtually every aspect of your Galaxy phone or tablet. Before you panic, this isn’t some third-party tool that risks breaking everything. Good Lock is stable software that comes directly from Samsung. These are settings that would be overwhelming to bake directly into One UI, but they’re still made available for those of us who want to go ham.
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You can download the Good Lock app from either the Samsung Galaxy Store or from the Play Store.
Good Lock consists of numerous modules dedicated to modifying different aspects of your phone. To make changes to the status bar, you want to search for “QuickStar.” Inside this module, there are options to hide individual indicator icons as well as the clock. I’ve opted to turn every single one of them off.
Now Every App Is Fullscreen
With every indicator icon hidden, I now have what feels like a fullscreen experience inside every app. The status bar is still there—it’s just empty. The end result is that apps have a little extra white space at the top, but this is something I think looks natural with the vast majority of apps.
I’m writing these words using PenCake, a minimalist distraction-free writing app. It is the cleanest approach to a writing app I’ve seen yet, hindered in my view by the inability to enable a fullscreen view that hides the status bar. With Good Lock, I’ve been able to enable this distraction-free writing environment myself.
While fullscreen distraction-free writing is its own thing, there are actuality very few apps that I think wouldn’t benefit from a distraction-free experience. Whether it’s viewing photos, checking finances in a banking app, scrolling through music albums, or simply navigating a file manager, I find that a fullscreen view just feels more intimate. It’s almost like I’m using a single-purpose device.
This Helps With Deep Focus
A lot of people will find this entire exercise a bit weird. You have to be into this sort of thing to be into this sort of thing, and you know who you are.
Personally, I experimented with doing without a smartphone for years. I like the focused design of devices like the Light Phone 3. I appreciated what life was like with fewer distractions. Yet I find that the unexpected paradox of minimalist phones was that I wound up carrying around a lot more tech to compensate. That became a burden and a distraction in and of itself.
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I’ve since returned to a smartphone—a foldable one at that—and have reduced distractions by simply making modifications to my phone. Those notifications that aren’t in my taskbar? I rarely ever need to see them as soon as they arrive. The clock? When I’m not on my phone, I tell the time by looking at my watch, a wall clock, or glancing at my phone’s lockscreen. Why should that suddenly feel like too much work when I’m actively using my phone? As for status icons, I have never needed to be continuously reminded that I’m connected to Wi-Fi or that I have an upcoming alarm. I already know these things. Besides, that information isn’t hard to find when I need it.
The Time and Status Are Just a Swipe Away
Whenever I need any of the information I’ve cleared from the status bar, I just swipe down from the top of the screen. Swiping from the top-left provides me with the time, the date, and all of my notifications. Swiping down from the top-right shows most of my status icons. I can see the volume, check networking, and toggle Bluetooth.
To me, battery life is the most important indicator, and it also happens to be the one I can’t see by swiping down from the top of my screen. Fortunately, I have that information available directly on my homescreen thanks to Niagara Launcher, which really is a perfect companion to fullscreen applications and an increasingly good launcher for customizing your phone.
I use my phone more than ever, but it feels neither addictive nor compulsive. My book-style foldable phone is my PC, eReader, and notebook in one, so I’m going to have it out often. The important thing is staying vigilant about keeping distractions and temptations at bay until I choose to seek them out myself. Being fully immersed in one app at a time helps me do just that.
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