Set Up a VPN Connection
If your OnePlus phone connects to public Wi-Fi or you need to reach a company network from outside the office, an unprotected connection leaves your traffic open to snooping. A VPN profile encrypts that traffic and can route it through a server in another region, but only works once the correct server details are entered on the device. Without those details, the connection fails or falls back to your regular network.
Enable or Disable Call Barring
If you are traveling abroad with your OnePlus and want to avoid unexpected roaming charges, call barring lets you block specific call types before they even connect. You can restrict outgoing calls, incoming calls, or international calls depending on which option you activate. Without the right setting enabled, calls still go through as usual and charges keep piling up.
Set App Time Limits
If a game or social app keeps eating more of your day than you planned, screen time alone will not fix that. OnePlus phones running OxygenOS include an app timer inside Digital Wellbeing that locks an app once its daily allowance runs out. Without setting a limit, the app stays fully accessible no matter how long you use it.
Pairing Messages for Web with a PC
If you want to reply to texts without picking up your phone every time, pairing Messages with a browser tab on your PC solves that. The catch is that the phone still has to handle every message in the background, so the web session depends entirely on a working connection between the two devices. Many users get stuck at the QR code step because they open the wrong menu or use a browser that blocks the scanner.
Enable or Disable Auto-Sync for Personal Data
Contacts, calendar entries and app data can update automatically the moment you change them online or on another device. If Auto-sync personal data is switched off, those changes stop reaching your OnePlus phone until you sync manually or turn the option back on.
Silence Notifications From Individual Apps
Getting a sound alert for every single WhatsApp message, even when you only want a quiet reminder, gets annoying fast on a OnePlus phone. Muting an app or a specific notification category keeps the alert visible in the notification shade and on the lock screen, but removes the sound, vibration and pop-up banner. That is different from switching an app's notifications off completely, which hides them from you entirely.
Enable or Disable Lift to Wake
If your OnePlus screen keeps lighting up every time you pick up the phone or just shift it in your hand, the motion sensor behind 'Pick up your phone to show' is reacting too eagerly. That constant wake-up drains battery faster and can expose your lock screen notifications at moments you did not intend. The setting is meant to save you a tap when checking the time, but it often triggers from pocket movement or when passing the phone between hands.
Enable or Disable Accessibility Menu
If the Accessibility Menu button is missing from your navigation bar, shortcuts for Assistant, power control, volume and recent apps are not available in the enlarged panel. The feature depends on a separate permission toggle, so switching it once in the wrong place leaves it off. Turning it back on restores the larger on-screen controls for anyone who relies on simplified navigation.
Reset App Preferences
If several apps on your OnePlus suddenly stay silent, open the wrong default app, or get stuck with a permission you blocked weeks ago, tracking down the exact toggle takes forever. Usually a mix of disabled apps, blocked notifications, stuck default app choices, and background data limits piles up over time. A single system reset clears that whole layer without deleting any app data.
Set a Lock Screen Password
If your OnePlus phone has no lock screen password set, anyone who picks it up can open contacts, messages, photos and apps without restriction. OxygenOS offers Pattern, PIN and Password as unlock methods, but many users skip this step during setup or after a reset. Without an active lock method, private data and payment apps stay exposed the moment someone else grabs the device.
Stopwatch: Start, Pause and Lap Timer
Trying to time a workout or a recipe on your OnePlus phone but the stopwatch buttons seem to do nothing when you tap them? The Clock app bundles a stopwatch with lap timing, but Start, Lap, Pause and Reset only respond in a fixed order. Tap them out of sequence and the stopwatch either freezes on the current time or the lap list stays empty.
Turn Do Not Disturb On or Off
Calls keep ringing through even though you switched on silent mode, or notifications stay muted long after you meant to turn them back on. On OnePlus phones, Do Not Disturb handles sounds, vibrations and call rejection separately from the regular ringer switch, so toggling one does not always affect the other. Knowing where this setting actually lives in Oxygenos prevents missed alerts or unwanted interruptions.
Set Up Bedtime Mode
If your OnePlus screen stays in full color and notifications keep buzzing right before you fall asleep, the built-in bedtime routine probably isn't active yet. Without a schedule, the phone never dims its colors or silences alerts on its own, so late-night scrolling gets no visual cue to stop. Bedtime mode ties grayscale and silence to a fixed time window or to your charging habit, so it works without you touching a single toggle each night.
Add a Contact Shortcut to the Home Screen
Digging through the Contacts app every time you want to reach the same person wastes time, especially if that contact is not one of your recent calls. On OnePlus phones, a home screen shortcut places that contact right next to your apps, one tap away. Here is what the Add to Home screen option actually does and when it is worth setting up.
Stop Battery Saver Turning Off After Charging
If Battery Saver on your OnePlus phone switches off by itself once charging passes roughly 90%, the „Turn off when fully charged“ option is behind it. That's inconvenient if you want power saving to stay active no matter how full the battery is.
Silence Alarms After a Set Time
If your OnePlus alarm keeps blaring long after you have already woken up, it can disturb the rest of the household or even the neighbors through thin walls. The Clock app lets you set a fixed duration after which the alarm stops on its own instead of ringing indefinitely. Without this limit, an unattended alarm just keeps sounding until someone dismisses it by hand.
Enable or Disable a SIM Card
On a Dual SIM OnePlus phone, one line sometimes needs to be shut off completely instead of just switched to the background. Turning off a SIM card stops it from receiving calls and texts right away, while mobile data and messaging priorities move automatically to the remaining card. This is useful when a second line sits unused for a while but should not be removed from the tray.
Enable or Disable UltraShot HDR
Photos taken on your OnePlus phone sometimes come out with blown-out skies or crushed shadows, and UltraShot HDR is the setting responsible for balancing those extremes. When it is switched on, the camera captures several exposures and blends them into one shot, which can make some scenes look overprocessed or slow down capture speed. Turning it off gives you a single, faster exposure at the cost of that extra brightness detail.
Add App to Data Saver Exception List
When Data Saver is active on your OnePlus phone, background data gets blocked for most apps. WhatsApp and other messengers can then miss incoming messages until you open them manually. Adding an app to the unrestricted data list keeps it connected even while data saving stays on.
Record a Video with the Camera App
Switching from photo to video mode on your OnePlus camera looks simple, but many people miss the pause control that sits right next to the shutter button once recording starts. Without knowing where it is, you risk stopping a clip too early or losing a moment you cannot repeat. The video toolbar behaves differently from photo mode, and that catches people off guard.
Enable or Disable USB Tethering
If your laptop or PC shows no internet connection after plugging in the USB cable, USB tethering on your OnePlus is probably still switched off or fighting with another active connection. Some OxygenOS versions also pop up a prompt asking which network connection to share, and picking the wrong one leaves the computer offline. This is different from a broken cable or driver issue, since the phone controls the tethering toggle itself.
Enable or Disable Screen Rotation
When you tilt your OnePlus sideways, the whole screen content flips with it, which helps when you are browsing a website or watching a video in landscape. The same behavior gets in the way when a photo, a game, or a fixed app layout rotates on its own at the wrong moment. If Auto-rotate keeps flipping your display unexpectedly, or refuses to rotate when you actually want it to, the setting controlling this behavior lives in the display options.
Enable or Disable Location Data in Photos and Videos
If your photos and videos do not show where they were taken in the gallery app, the camera is not tagging them with location data. This can happen after a system update or a fresh camera app install, when location tagging quietly resets to off. Turning geotagging back on lets you see the exact spot of every shot later, which is useful for travel photos or documenting a job site.
Enable Parallel Apps for Dual Messenger Accounts
Running two WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook or Instagram accounts on one OnePlus phone usually fails because the app only supports a single login at a time. OxygenOS solves this with a built-in cloning feature that creates a separate, independent copy of the app. Without it, you are stuck switching accounts manually every time you need the other profile.