Add Widgets to the Home Screen
If your OnePlus home screen only shows app icons and never picks up weather, calendar or messenger widgets, you are probably missing the widget picker, which sits behind a long-press gesture instead of a menu. Placing a widget in the wrong spot often makes it snap right back into the tray. Enough free space on the current page decides whether the drop actually works.
Enable Dark Mode via System Tone
Looking for a Dark Mode switch in your OnePlus settings and coming up empty? OxygenOS hides this option inside the system tone, which controls the overall color scheme of the interface instead of listing dark design as its own toggle. Until you find that setting, backgrounds, menus, and app drawers stay locked in the bright layout even at night.
Restrict Apps to Wi-Fi Only or Mobile Data
If Netflix, YouTube or another streaming app keeps eating through your mobile data plan even when you are near a router, it is likely still allowed to use mobile data in the background. OxygenOS lets you lock individual apps to Wi-Fi only, or the reverse, so they never touch your cellular connection again. This is separate from the general data saver toggle and works per app.
Add Emergency Contacts for SOS
If your phone is set to send its location during an SOS alert but nobody ever receives it, no emergency contact has been saved yet. OnePlus only sends the automatic SOS text with your current location to people you have added to a dedicated emergency list beforehand. Without that list, the alert has no recipient at all.
Change Keyboard Theme (Gboard)
The default Gboard layout on OnePlus phones sticks to a flat gray look that gets boring fast. If your home screen has its own color scheme, that gray keyboard clashes every time you type. A different keyboard theme, plus the option to turn key borders on or off, brings the typing screen closer to your own style.
Schedule Do Not Disturb Mode
Turning Do Not Disturb on and off by hand every night or before every meeting gets old fast, and it is easy to forget switching it back off, leaving missed calls and messages piling up. On OnePlus phones, the Do Not Disturb schedule inside Sounds & vibration can handle that timing for you, based on either a fixed time window or calendar events. Multiple schedules can run at once, each with its own days and hours.
Delete Cookies in the Browser App
If a website keeps asking you to log in again or shows outdated settings even after you cleared your history, leftover cookies in your OnePlus browser app are usually the cause. Cookies pile up over weeks of browsing and can also slow down page loading on sites you visit often.
Set Vibration Pattern and Intensity for Calls
Every incoming call on your OnePlus phone can feel identical to a random notification buzz, especially when the phone sits in a pocket or bag. OxygenOS lets you pick a distinct vibration pattern and set how strong it feels for calls specifically, but the option is buried several menus deep inside the sound settings. Without adjusting it, you keep guessing whether your phone is ringing or just pinging.
Enable or Disable VoLTE Calls
Calls on your OnePlus sound muffled or take a few extra seconds to connect, especially indoors or in areas with weak signal. This happens because the phone falls back to older 2G or 3G networks instead of routing voice traffic over your 4G connection. Switching this behavior on or off changes call quality, connection speed, and even battery drain.
Enable or Disable the Keyboard Number Row
If every digit forces a switch to the symbol keyboard, typing passwords or addresses on a OnePlus phone slows down fast. Gboard can add a dedicated number row along the top edge, but it takes up extra vertical space and some users prefer to turn it off again. Whether that row is active or hidden depends on a single Gboard preference.
Enable or Disable Share Location in the Browser App
If Chrome keeps popping up a location prompt every time you search for something nearby, or local search results suddenly disappear, the Share location setting in the browser app is behind it. This toggle controls whether any website can even ask for your GPS position, separate from the app-level location permissions you manage elsewhere on your OnePlus phone. Turning it off silences every future request, but it also breaks maps, delivery tracking, and store-locator pages that rely on your position.
Add apps to a home screen folder
A cluttered home screen with dozens of loose app icons makes it hard to find anything fast. On OnePlus phones, apps do not merge into folders automatically, so you have to drag them in manually or they just sit scattered across your screens.
Connect to a Wi-Fi Network
Your OnePlus phone only auto-connects to the Wi-Fi network you set up on day one. Moving to a new home, joining an office network or logging into a guest hotspot means finding and adding that network yourself, and a mistyped password is the most common reason the attempt fails.
Block Ads in Chrome Browser
Ads and banners popping up mid-scroll on your OnePlus browser usually mean the built-in ad filter is switched off or set too loose. Chrome ships with a basic blocker for intrusive ad formats, but it only works once the right toggle is active. Without it, pages load slower and get cluttered with pop-ups.
Turn On Wi-Fi Automatically
If your OnePlus keeps ignoring a known Wi-Fi network after you leave Bluetooth or mobile data active, the automatic Wi-Fi feature might be switched off. This function is supposed to re-enable Wi-Fi on its own once you are back in range of a saved network with a strong signal. Some people want the opposite and switch it off to stop the phone waking Wi-Fi unexpectedly and draining battery.
Add a Second Account
After the first setup, your OnePlus phone only keeps the Google Account you signed in with during activation. If you use a second Gmail address, a work Exchange account, or an Outlook inbox, none of that syncs until you register it separately. Apps like Facebook or WhatsApp handle their own login and never show up in this list.
Enable or Disable Auto-Punctuate for Double-Tap Spacebar
If double-tapping the spacebar drops in a period you did not want, or nothing happens at all when you try it, Gboard's automatic punctuation behavior is set differently than you expect. This shortcut is meant to speed up typing by turning two quick space taps into a period plus a space, but it can also mess with fast typists who just want two spaces. The setting lives inside the keyboard's own text correction options, not in the general system menu, which is why many OnePlus users never find it.
Enable or Disable Chat Features in Messages
If your OnePlus keeps showing typing indicators, read receipts or high-resolution photo sharing inside the stock Messages app, chat features are switched on and syncing over mobile data or Wi-Fi. Some users want this messenger-style behavior turned off because it reveals when a message was read or drains data in the background. Others find messages stuck on plain SMS because the toggle never got activated in the first place.
Show or Hide Password Characters While Typing
On a OnePlus phone, each character you type into a password field flashes briefly before turning into an asterisk. That short preview lets anyone glancing at your screen catch a glimpse of your login details, which becomes a problem in public places or shared spaces.
Schedule Power On/Off
If your OnePlus phone keeps lighting up with notifications at night or drains its battery while you sleep, manually switching it off and back on every day gets old fast. The Scheduled power on/off feature lets the phone shut down and restart on its own at fixed times. Without it, you either leave the phone running all night or risk forgetting to turn it back on before your alarm.
Add another fingerprint
If your OnePlus phone only unlocks reliably with one specific finger, switching hands or holding the phone at an angle often causes failed scans at the lock screen. Oxygen OS lets you store several fingerprint IDs at once, not just the first one you registered during setup. That only helps once additional fingers are actually added and named so you can tell them apart later.
Turn Touch Vibration On or Off
If every tap, menu selection or navigation button on your OnePlus triggers a short buzz, that is the touch vibration feedback kicking in. Some people rely on that haptic confirmation, others find it distracting or draining on battery over time. Either way, the behavior is controlled by a single toggle you can flip whenever you want.
Remove App Shortcut from Home Screen
When your OnePlus home screen fills up with shortcuts you barely use, finding the apps you actually need takes longer every time. Deleting the wrong icon by accident or confusing 'Remove' with 'Uninstall' is a common worry, since both options can appear in the same long-press menu. Knowing which action just clears the shortcut and which one deletes the app entirely saves you from losing data you did not mean to remove.
Change Preset Theme on Home and Lock Screen
If your OnePlus home screen and lock screen still look the way they did out of the box, the preset theme is the setting controlling color accents, brightness, and overall tone. Oxygen OS bundles three built-in styles - Vibrant tints, Illuminating light, and Nuanced dark - but the switch sits inside a settings area many users overlook. Picking the wrong one can also affect how icons and widgets read in daylight or at night.