Good Lock is one of our favorite parts of the Samsung Galaxy experience. Being able to tweak and customize your OS at such a deep level is something few phones let you do, and for some of us, Good Lock is important enough to be numbered among the reasons we stay with this brand. Once a year, Good Lock breaks for a lot of users as the next versions of Android and One UI arrive, and that’s no different this year with One UI 6. Many modules are broken at the moment, but now we have a timeline of what to expect next.

On Samsung’s South Korean community forum (via 9to5 Google), the manager of Good Lock’s development team shared an update for the suite of apps. The first change is easy to miss but is a welcome one: The name. Major Good Lock updates used to be named after the year they were released in, usually because the tiny team of developers couldn’t get everything ready until the first few months of the new year after a One UI update. While the team is still small, they can update the service much faster now, so the updates will instead be named after the version of One UI they are based on. So, One UI 6.0 will soon be upon us, and Good Lock 6.0 will bring some exciting changes to look forward to.

Source: Samsung

One UI 6 has made some significant changes to the OS, especially in the notification area

First, the moderator took a moment to explain that this Good Lock update has been problematic due to some of the significant changes that have been made in One UI 6, which are pretty extensive. Because of that, some modules like Theme Park and HomeUp are currently delayed as they require a lot of rewriting. In Theme Park’s case, the ability to change the shape of icons and set a keyboard wallpaper will be removed. Thankfully, the latter can be done through Keys Cafe, and Theme Park will still support custom icon packs from the Play Store.

Good Lock 6.0

Good Lock 6.0 is what we’re most excited about, and some of the upcoming features sound promising:

• Good Lock 6.0 will be released alongside the stable version of One UI 6.
• Edge Lighting+ will expand to all Galaxy devices instead of being exclusive to foldables.
• The steps to install and update modules via the Galaxy Store are being simplified.
• Sound Assistant is getting new customization features for the volume panel.
• Wonderland can make unique animations between AOD, the lock screen, and the home screen.
• Some notifications are currently not working with Nice Catch; we’ll get an update soon.

Overall, this sounds like a solid update. Remember, these new features are in addition to all the existing ones that will have been updated to work with One UI 6, so a lot of work will have gone into Good Lock 6.0. Edge Lighting + is what we’re especially looking forward to, as it used to work with all Galaxy phones before becoming exclusive to foldables like the Flip 5 and Fold 5.

Good Lock 6.1

When Samsung launches the new Galaxy S series, that phone ships with an updated version of One UI that includes new features that other devices will receive with a software update. That means One UI 6.1 should ship with the Galaxy S24, and Good Lock will have some updates to go with it:

• LockStar and Clock Face will be integrated with the native lock screen customization screen.
• Keys Cafe (Google Translate mistakenly translates this to Kids Cafe) will be able to map functions to keyboard gestures.

LockStar and Clock Face are great modules, but using them has always been a bit of a pain, so having them built into the main lock screen editor will significantly improve usability. Likewise, mapping functions to keyboard gestures sounds intriguing. We don’t know exactly how that will work, but maybe it’ll be good enough to make us switch back to Samsung’s keyboard over Gboard. Nope, I couldn’t type that without laughing.

Android 14 is expected to launch alongside the Pixel 8 on October 4, and One UI 6 should follow within a month or so based on previous updates. However, the current beta is relatively stable, so it wouldn’t surprise us if it showed up sooner.