Advanced accessibility settings and apps on your Galaxy phone or tablet

Galaxy S21 Ultra displaying Advanced accessibility settings

If it’s easier for you to press on physical keys rather than tap on your screen, or if you’d like to map specific functions to your keys, use your device's advanced accessibility settings. Your keys can accomplish multiple things at once, like bringing up settings for color adjustments, muting sounds, and turning on Voice Assistant.

Advanced settings

You can use your device's advanced options to create direct access for certain features, customize your notifications, and much more.

From Settings, swipe to and tap Accessibility. Tap Advanced settings, and then choose your desired option:

  • Accessibility button: Tapping one of the available services will create an Accessibility button on your navigation bar. You can tap this button to activate the service of your choosing.

A list of Advanced settings on a Galaxy phone
  • Side and Volume up keys: Activate accessibility functions when you’re pressing the Side and Volume up keys at the same time. If two or more functions are set to the keys, a Direct access window will appear on the screen, so you can select which function you’d like to use.

  • Volume up and down keys: Pressing and holding the Volume up and Volume down keys for three seconds will activate the service of your choosing.

  • Flash notification: The camera or screen will flash during alarms or when you receive notifications.

  • Time to take action: Select how long unread messages will appear on your screen.

Spoken assistance

On One UI 5 devices, you’ll be able to use additional accessibility features for Spoken assistance. To find this, navigate to and open Settings, then tap Accessibility, and then tap Spoken assistance. The following options will be available:

  • Speak keyboard input aloud: Your device will read aloud characters, words, or both. Tap the switch to turn on this feature.

  • Audio description: If it’s available, your device will automatically select the audio soundtrack that includes an audio description when you’re watching videos. Tap the switch to turn on this feature.

List of settings under Spoken assistance
  • Bixby Vision for accessibility: You can use Bixby Vision to access helpful features like Scene describer, Object identifier, Text reader, and Color detector. These features allow you to point the camera at an object, text, or color to hear additional information. Or, you can capture a scene to hear a description of it. You can also open Bixby Vision from this screen.

  • Voice Label: Save recordings on NFC tags. Voice Recorder must be installed to use this function. Tap Voice Label, and then tap Download to install Voice Recorder.

Installed apps and services

It may be difficult to keep track of your accessibility apps, especially if you’re using several at once. The Accessibility Home screen provides a quick way to view all your installed apps and services in one place, so you can always check them.

  1. Navigate to and open Settings, and then tap Accessibility

  2. Tap Installed apps to view a complete list of accessibility apps that are installed. You can turn the apps on or off from this screen by tapping each one and then tapping the switch

  3. Tap Settings to open the settings list for the app.

A list of Installed apps on a Galaxy phone
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