Samsung’s Now Bar is a first-party One UI 7-exclusive feature. This means that its usefulness will be determined by how many third-party apps want to integrate with it. Well, it looks like Samsung wants to force certain third-party apps to work with the Now Bar.
In case you don’t know, the Now Bar is an addition to One UI 7, and it’s probably the most exciting feature of the new Android skin. It’s the company’s take on live activities. The Now Bar is a UI element that sits at the bottom of your lock screen or AOD. It will show you activities like alarms, media, and more. It will update in realtime and keep you up to date on what’s going on. When you get into your phone, it will sit at the top of the screen.
Right now, there’s a shortlist of apps that support it like Voice Recorder, Emergency sharing, Samsung Health, Interpreter, Google Maps, Samsung Notes, and Bixby. The only non-third-party app is Google Maps.
Samsung could force third-party apps to work with the Now Bar
People will draw obvious comparisons to Apple’s Dynamic Island. One thing that is holding the Dynamic Island back is the fact that there’s not a ton of third-party support for it. This is a shame because there’s still a ton of potential with the feature.
It seems that this could be the same issue with the Now Bar. However, according to some rumors, Samsung doesn’t want that to happen. The company might actually force some apps to be compatible with the Now Bar. We know that there are a handful of apps already selected. The list consists of YouTube, YouTube Music, Kakao T, and Naver Sports. The list goes on, but we don’t know what other apps Samsung wants to use.
While that’s the case, another rumor states that Samsung could bring forced support for all third-party apps. If that happens, then the Now Bar will be much more useful than the Dynamic Island. Forced support will obviously bring some complications, but we can’t argue with the utility of having support for millions of apps.
Lastly, another rumor points to Samsung making a dedicated Good Lock module for the Now Bar. This will give it some customizations like the ability to change the size, color, and animations.
At this point, we don’t know what will happen, but it’ll be exciting to find out. Things are still pretty weird at Samsung with its updates, so we’ll just have to be patient.
