How to use the One-handed Operation mode on the Note 3 – Feature Focus

Some say that smaller phones are better because you can use them with just one hand. For everybody else though, having a large screen for consuming media, browsing the web, and being productive is totally worth the occasional feat of finger acrobatics.

At 5.7-inch, the Galaxy Note 3 is clearly a device that’s meant for two-hand usage, and while that’s not bad in itself, there are times when you have to operate it with just one.

To spare you some of the potential frustration, Samsung equipped the Note 3 with an interesting featured called One-handed Operation, that Josh will walk you through in the video below.

To turn on One-handed Operation on your Galaxy Note 3, go to Settings>Controls and select the mode that you prefer. You can choose to activate the feature only in some apps – Calculator, Unlock Pattern, Keyboard, and the Keypad – or opt for the system-wide mode, which actually shrinks the entire UI so you can reach all elements with your thumb.

If you choose the system-wide mode, you can activate it by making a quick left-right swipe gesture, which is pretty, well… handy. You can resize the shrunken UI to your liking and do pretty much anything you want in this mode, except for taking pics and playing full screen games.

To be clear, One-handed Operation is not original (the Optimus G Pro has a similar feature), and it’s not an elegant solution either, but it gets the job done and may be very useful for some users. Like so many other features that Samsung baked into TouchWiz, it’s just there, waiting for you to give it a try, but you can still have a great experience if you choose to ignore it.

Have you tried out the One-handed Operation mode on your Samsung Galaxy Note 3? What other features you’d like us to focus on in the future? Tell us in the comments.