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App lock functionality has been a staple feature on phones from several Android brands. This lets you put apps behind a PIN or biometric scan. Unfortunately, Samsung doesn’t have a proper app lock system. Thankfully, it looks like this is changing in One UI 9.5.
Tipster Fahad Ali Javed (h/t: SamMobile) uncovered an App Lock feature in Samsung’s upcoming software. The app lock icon appears when you press and hold an app icon in the app drawer. Check out the leaker’s screenshots below.
One screenshot also confirms that you can indeed open a locked app by using your biometrics or screen lock. The screen also shows that the locked app’s widgets and shortcuts are removed from your home screen. Furthermore, the app’s notification content is hidden away. Finally, the screen notes that content from locked apps (e.g., photos, videos, contacts) will still be available to apps that already have access to them.
It’s worth noting that Samsung phones do have the Secure Folder feature. This lets you hide an app by adding it to a protected folder that requires a PIN, password, or biometric scan. However, adding the app to Secure Folder creates a cloned app, with the original still accessible in the app drawer without a PIN or biometric scan. You can delete the original app, but you still can’t access a locked version via the app drawer. So a native app lock feature would give you easier access to a locked app.
This app lock feature comes barely a week after the Android Canary 2608 release brought app lock functionality. Furthermore, the same restrictions regarding widgets, shortcuts, notifications, and content access apply to the Canary release. We’re guessing this can’t be a coincidence and that Samsung might be using the Android Canary feature instead of building its own tool from scratch.
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