Samsung changed Galaxy Z Flip's cover screen with One UI 9, and a lot of owners are not happy

Imagine buying a flip phone because you love everything about its little outer screen, spending hours dressing it up with the perfect wallpaper, widgets, and shortcuts, only for a software update to turn your carefully curated masterpiece into a weather report. That’s the rather unwelcome forecast facing some Samsung Galaxy Z Flip owners after One UI 9.

Complaints are piling up on Reddit and Samsung’s community forums, where users are asking why an update meant to improve their phones has made one of their favorite features harder to enjoy.

Before One UI 9, unlocking the cover screen displayed your chosen wallpaper, clock, and shortcuts. You could launch apps, check notifications, and hit Home to return to that familiar starting point.

Now, unlocking the phone brings up Samsung’s Now Brief dashboard or a widget page instead. The original wallpaper-and-clock interface effectively becomes a lock screen, with no straightforward way to return to it without locking the phone again.

That seemingly small change has several annoying consequences. Users report losing the ability to double-tap the unlocked screen to turn it off, while the redesigned navigation requires relearning notification gestures. Others dislike the blurred backgrounds, restricted widget customization, and changes to Good Lock’s MultiStar launcher. Some even report losing convenient cover-screen access to work-profile apps.

There’s a silver lining, though. One UI 9 introduces a dedicated app drawer that makes more apps accessible without the previous Good Lock workarounds. Some owners actually prefer the expanded functionality. Disabling Now Brief under Cover screen settings also removes the unwanted dashboard, although it doesn’t restore the old home-screen experience.

And therein lies Samsung’s peculiar achievement: making the Flip’s smallest screen do more, while leaving some owners wishing it would simply do what it did yesterday. If Now Brief is getting in your way, you can disable “Show the Now brief and favorite apps” under Cover screen settings. A few people have pointed to this workaround, although it won’t restore the old wallpaper-and-clock home screen or its familiar navigation.

This workaround won’t bring back the old navigation, though, so consider sharing your feedback through Samsung Members. Samsung hasn’t confirmed any plans to reverse the changes, and hearing exactly what owners want restored might be the push it needs.