CoverScreen OS keeps doing for the Flip what Samsung should have done

I want to love Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 6. I do like most of it, but I seem to bash its Flex Window experience just as much as I praise anything else. For whatever reason, Samsung doesn’t seem interested in making its cover screen experience as smooth or intuitive as the Motorola Razr Plus (2024). But every time Samsung comes up short, there’s a third-party developer ready to step in and push the Galaxy Z Flip series to reach its potential. This time, it’s CoverScreen OS with a no-brainer of an update: apps that automatically rotate on the Flex Window.

At first, I wasn’t sure why I’d need to care about apps that rotate on an almost square display. After all, there’s nothing the Galaxy Z Flip 6 should be able to tell me in landscape orientation that it couldn’t in portrait, right? Well, that’s mostly true until you open Spotify. See, if you’ve ever scrolled up on a song in the Spotify app, you’ll know that it pops up with more content from the artist you’re listening to, as well as lyrics to the song that’s playing and upcoming tour stops. It’s all helpful information, especially if you want to support a new artist that popped up on a playlist, but there’s one problem — none of it works on the Flex Window.

It didn’t until now, at least. With the latest CoverScreen OS update, as soon as you flip your Flip from portrait orientation to landscape, it’ll switch to the full-screen version of Spotify that allows for vertical swiping. If you’re like me and constantly check the lyrics of a song to make sure that you heard them correctly, the update makes a big difference. Rather than opening my phone, jumping to Spotify, and looking for the lyrics, I can do everything from the Flex Window and have my phone back in my pocket in about half the time.

Granted, I haven’t found much use for app auto-rotation on the Flex Window outside of music streaming services. It also only works in the app version of Spotify — the widget is still locked to its standard portrait orientation. Other apps I’ve tried, like Strava and Instagram, tend to look and act the same whether they’re in landscape or portrait, and occasionally, the rotation causes the bottom edge of the Flex Window to act up. However, the option of rotation adds something meaningful to the Galaxy Z Flip series, and I find myself wondering why Samsung didn’t do it first.

I often wonder why Samsung treats the Flex Window like it does. I was willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt when its cover screen was a tiny 1.6-inch panel, but those days are long behind us. Samsung has high expectations for its Flex Window, going so far as to create an AI-powered Auto Zoom feature for its cameras, but that makes the omissions all the more confusing. Every time Samsung does something clever in an attempt to make the best flip phone on the market, it seems to do so while ignoring a simple feature that would make the Flex Window more useful.

Right now, setting up the ideal Flex Window experience requires a balancing act that I’m not sure how to recommend. If you want apps, there’s Good Lock, but you’re stuck with the standard portrait orientation. If you want apps that rotate, there’s CoverScreen OS, but you have to pay a weekly (or annual) subscription to do anything beyond the basics — which is tough to recommend when the phone already costs $1,100. Maybe you can get by with a carefully curated set of widgets, but Samsung doesn’t exactly guide your hand there, either.

Perhaps Samsung needs to integrate CoverScreen OS into the fold completely. It must either become part of Good Lock or the default Flex Window experience. Clearly, it’s put the most thought into the smaller parts of the Flex Window, and now Samsung should either copy them or give credit where it’s due.