OxygenOS 16 got a lot of coverage when it dropped, most of it focused on the headline stuff: the new Flux themes, the home screen resizing, App Lock from the long-press menu. I covered some of that myself. But after living with the update on my OnePlus Open for a while, I keep stumbling across things that weren’t on by default, and weren’t easy to find. Some of them are actually useful. Here are four that I keep enabled.

The back gesture preview that nobody turned on

Enable it in Settings > System & Updates > System navigation

OxygenOS 16 has a predictive back gesture called Swipe Animation, and it is off by default. Once you turn it on, swiping from either edge of the screen shows you a little preview of where you’re going before you commit. If you’re about to accidentally exit an app, for example, you can reverse the swipe and stay where you are. It works with most Google apps and OnePlus system apps, including Camera, Photos, Settings, and Calendar.

To enable it, go to Settings > System & Updates > System navigation, then scroll all the way to the bottom. The toggle is there, labeled Swipe Animation, and it’s listed as beta.

Now that I’ve enabled it, I’ve gotten used to seeing where I’m headed when I swipe back to the previous screen. The UI felt more fluid immediately, in a way that’s hard to pin down until you go back to a phone without it. On the Open’s large inner display, where you’re constantly navigating between split-screen apps and wide layouts, being able to peek at your destination before committing is kind of fantastic. Third-party app support is still inconsistent, but it works well enough in supported apps that turning it off feels like a downgrade.

The setting that hides your notifications from anyone nearby

Ignore their nosy faces

OxygenOS 16 added a feature called Smart Notifications Hiding that uses your front camera to detect if someone besides you is looking at your phone. When a notification comes in, the phone checks who’s looking at the screen. If it’s you, the content shows normally. If it’s someone else, the notification stays hidden. It only activates at the moment a notification arrives, not continuously, so it’s not running your camera all the time.

You’ll find it under Settings > Notifications & Quick Settings > More Settings, at the bottom of the list. It’s off by default and requires face enrollment to work.

I enabled this mostly out of curiosity, but it’s turned into one of my favorite privacy features. Handing the Open to someone to show them something on the big inner display can definitely trigger some worry about them seeing a notification I don’t want them to. This feature manages that without making me manually deal with it every time. The front camera angle detection isn’t perfect, but it catches the obvious cases. OnePlus isn’t the only one shipping useful Android privacy features off by default, but this one is more buried than most.

Live Alerts work with third-party apps now, but you have to turn them on

Per-app toggle buried inside each app’s notification settings

Live Alerts, OnePlus’s version of the pill-shaped status bar notification that shows real-time info for timers, deliveries, navigation and music, expanded significantly in OxygenOS 16. Previously, Live Alerts only worked with a small set of OnePlus apps. In the new OS, any app that uses Android 16’s Live Updates API can show up there. Unfortunately, the toggle is off by default for every third-party app, and you have to enable it individually for each one.

To turn it on for an app, go into Notifications & Quick Settings, then tap Live Alerts. Scroll down to Tap a capsule to and choose either View in card or Open app. You can then look at the App alert section, with various Google and third-party apps like Netflix. Tap each one to turn the Live Alert off or on. System services are next, and my phone at least had Music playback, Game timer service, Personal hotspot, and Screen recording set to on. You can also toggle Unobtrusive Live Alerts on or off, which will minimize Live Alerts into bubbles after a short period.

It’s not a huge thing, but having the modern Live Alert style of persistent notifications like iOS already does is a nice visual reminder of what your phone is doing. Whether you’re watching for your Doordash delivery, want to know which Apple Music track is playing, or need to follow Google Maps directions without unlocking your phone, this is the way to do it.

App shortcuts pinned directly to the home screen icon

Easier access to in-app features

This one is less buried and more just overlooked. The home screen icon resize was covered as part of OxygenOS 16’s customization push, but the shortcut pinning that unlocks when you resize an icon gets almost no attention. The idea is that you can turn any supported app into something closer to a widget, with direct access to specific content inside it. On a foldable with a large inner display and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that handles more multitasking than you’d expect, pinning two frequently used Slack contacts and adding alarms or timers to an oversized Clock icon is fairly useful.

To activate, just long-press on any app icon on your home screen, then resize it using the little handle. If it supports shortcut adding, little plus signs will show up in the larger icon. Tapping on them will let you add the supported shortcuts. For the Clock, you can add a new alarm, a new timer, a stopwatch start, and a screen saver button. Slack gave me one contact I could add, while WhatsApp doesn’t give me any plus signs at all, no matter how large I make the icon. You’ll have to experiment with each of your app icons and see what you can do, but it’s pretty great to have a quick way to access app features without having to open the entire app.

Worth enabling all four

None of these are top-shelf features included in any OnePlus marketing materials. But after a few weeks with OxygenOS 16 on my Open, they’ve definitely become part of how I use the phone every day, which is more than I can say for some of the features that did make the announcement.