TL;DR
- With One UI 8, Samsung will ask you to re-enroll fingerprints for Secure Folder biometric access.
- Apps moved to your Secure Folder can now be easily hidden from the rest of your phone.
- Samsung’s implementing a new Quick Settings button for immediately hiding all Secure Folder assets.
Samsung has clearly learned its lesson when it comes to making its users wait (and wait, and wait) for access to the latest Android beta, and this year it’s getting started with Android 16 and One UI 8 nice and early. Today we’re getting our first official look at the One UI 8 beta, and we’re already diving in to search for everything interesting that Samsung’s changing. So far that’s involved some Now Bar upgrades and new earbud controls, and now we’re turning our attention to tweaks arriving for Samsung’s Secure Folder.
While your lock screen already helps keep the data on your phone safe from casual access, Secure Folder offers an extra layer of security, particularly handy if you know that other people are going to be using your device. You can move your most private data to its encrypted protection, and even hide its presence entirely.
Compared to Samsung’s implementation with One UI 7, we can already spot a few key changes. For one, you’ll notice how Secure Folder now asks you to re-enroll your fingerprints if you want to use them for biometric access. That may seem a tad redundant, but it really speaks to the way that Samsung has built Secure Folder as an enclave away from the rest of your phone’s assets.
Previously, moving apps into your Secure Folder was a bit cumbersome. “Moving” an app there essentially created a copy, but left you with your original. And if you didn’t want anyone without Secure Folder access using it, you had to go in and manually uninstall your old copy. With One UI 8, Samsung is making this a whole lot easier, and you have the option to easily hide apps so they’ll only be accessible in the Secure Folder.
Finally, we’re getting a one-stop shortcut for immediately shutting things down and going dark. A new Quick Settings button not just hides the Secure Folder without forcing you to did through settings menus, but also shuts down the apps you’ve moved there and silences their notifications. Considering this is where Samsung encourages us to keep our most sensitive stuff, a super-quick way to just sweep it all under the rug feels like a completely on-brand addition.
Of course, this is only our first taste of a One UI 8 beta, so we could be seeing plenty of further changes before Samsung’s ready for its public release. Keep reading Android Authority for complete coverage of everything that entails.