So if you got yourself a new Galaxy S25 Ultra and you don't know where to start with customization, or if you're worried you might overlook some of your phone's best features. Well this video is for you.

And this is part one of a four part series and this one is all about customisation. Without using 3rd party apps.

Interactive Wallpaper Colour Options

Ok, on day one the first thing you might want to do is a little decorating, and changing the  Wallpaper is a good way to do this. And it’s quite simple really. Just

Pinch homescreen / Wallpaper & Style / Change Wallpaper

In the featured section you will see the one and only interactive official wallpaper. This one animates when you lock and unlock the device. It’s but everyone is likely to be using this by default. So let me show you how to change it up a little bit. Select it at the bottom and you'll see variations. Tap that and you see some of the other colour ways to choose from.

Dynamic Lock Screen

Ok, let’s say you want to keep things fresh. Here’s a setting you might want to try out. Go to

Settings / Wallpaper Services / Dynamic Lock Screen

Here you can choose from any of these themes and even have up to 5 different categories. And once setup you’ll have different lock screen wallpapers each time you lock your phone. And new professional images are added every two weeks. And if none of these are what you’re looking for. Just hit the basket icon & you can purchase more.

Ai Wallpaper

Now, if you want to create something new. A good way to do this is to use Ai. And it’s very easy to use.

Pinch home screen / change wallpaper / generate with Ai / Generative

Choose a style, customize the text prompts and generate and now you have something that will likely be exclusively for you. And if you tap the image you like you can choose to add it as homescreen, or lockscreen or both.

Ambient Wallpaper

Now this Wallpaper trick is my favourite. I like using my own wallpapers for the lockscreen and home screens. And if you like to use your own photos or photos or downloaded wallpapers. You’ll like this.

Pinch / Wallpaper and style / create with Ai / Photo Ambient

Not only does this add really nice contextual weather animation effects to your own photos or wallpapers. But, it also means you do even need to look out of the window or even unlock your phone to know what the weather is like.

Lock Screen customisation

Ok, now let's get your lock screen,  locked down with a style to match your style. Pinch home screen / Wallpaper & Style / Tap the lock screen

Here you can tap the clock & choose from the fonts, and colour & adjust  the size, and with some of the clock styles you can adjust the thinness or boldness of the text.  So definitely play around with the styles.

Lockscreen Widgets

Ok just like before pinch / wallpaper & style / tap lock screen

Here you have 4 spaces to add shortcuts to your lock screen and there’s one Ai tool that I highly recommend you add here. So tap add widgets, have a look at the available options. I personally like to have the ‘Calendar’ upcoming events widget, the interpreter can be very useful if you’re travelling but the one I highly recommend is the voice recorder. I was going to save this for part 2 of this video series but since we are here now, let me show you this real quick.

This is the perfect lock screen widget because you can start a recording without unlocking your phone. And you can control the recording on the now bar too. And this is the game changer. When you unlock your phone you can summarise the voice recording and transcribe it into text. So next time you’re dozing off in a meeting or during a lecture or something. A single tap on the lock screen is all you might need to get back up to speed.

Always On Options

Alright, now let's get your AOD customized aka Always on Display customized.  Settings/lock screen and AOD.

Turn on AOD, and then tap on the AOD text to enter the AOD settings. Here you can choose for the AOD to be black which will use less power or have it show you a dimmed-down version of your wallpaper. And you probably noticed these widgets here. There is one AI tool I highly recommend you add here. We'll come back to that.

Depending on the image, you might be able to remove the background if you want. You can also change the ‘When to show’ it will be on auto by default, which works well. But you might prefer tap to show, as this is probably the most energy-efficient way to use AOD.

Widget shapes & transparency

Alright now let me show you a few new home screen customisation tricks that probably no one has shown you yet. So if you pinch the home screen and go to widgets. There are a lot of options, and this trick works with the official Samsung Widgets.

For example the battery widget. So if you place this widget on the home screen. And then push and hold on to it. The settings option pops up. Tap that and you’ll then see the new shape options, and if you scroll down you’ll see the light and dark mode options & transparency. And with some but not all widgets you can remove the background entirely. Which can look really good.

App Stacks

So this is just a quick one. Now that you’ve added a widget and customize it. If you hold your finger down on that widget you can stack more on top of it. And each one can be individually customized in the way I just showed you in the previous tip.

Grid & App Sizes

Another quick tip, is actually a new and redesigned customisation tool on the Galaxy S25. If you pinch the home screen / go to settings / this is a shortcut to the home screen settings page.

Here you can dial up or dial down the app sizes. You can also remove widget and app labels if you want a cleaner. But only do this if you’re familiar with your app icons. And you might want to maximize your home screen grid while we are here. I personally go with the 5x6 to make the most of the space.

Large Folders

And on the topic of making the most of screen real estate. A good way to get organised is to place specific types of apps into folders. For example, all your social media apps. To create a folder just drag one app on top of another. Now, you can name the folder and hit the plus to quickly add more apps to the folder. And now that's done, all your apps in that folder take up only one space. But, here’s a pro tip.

With a regular folder like this, you have to tap the folder and then tap the app you want to open. But check this out. If you tap and hold on the folder you can enlarge it. Now you can tap and open individual apps with a single tap… Now here’s a pro, pro tip that probably know one has shown you yet…unless they’ve seen this video.

Colour coded folders & transparent folders

Check this out let's say you spent some time getting your apps organised into folders. You can actually make each folder unique. If you do this. Expand the folder / hit the black dot on the top right side. Here you can select a custom colour background.

And if you tap on the colour swatches options you can adjust the background colour transparency. Which I think looks good at around 35%. Or, you can if you really want to make the folder background completely transparent. So it’ll look like you have miniaturised apps.

Samsung Clock options

Samsung has made some new upgrades to their clock widget. You might like to test this out. Just pinch the home screen. Go to widgets. Choose the Samsung Clock. Here you can choose any of the styles and once placed. If you push and hold you’ll see there’s a bunch of new shapes to choose from.

Colour palette apps

This one is a classic customisation trick. It might take some fine-tuning to get it how you want. But, for now, let me show you the basics. Pinch the home screen/wallpaper & style / Colour palette. At the bottom of this screen, the phone will suggest some colour schemes based on your wallpaper selection. See if you like any of these. And keep in mind this colour palette carries across to all the system settings and apps.

Now, here’s where you can get creative. If you apply a palette to app icons. All your google & Samsung Apps will be the same colour. Again you’ll have to play around with the colour palettes until you find a colour that works well with your wallpaper.

Quick Settings customization

Something else worth customizing on day one is the quick settings menu. If you swipe down on the top right corner. This opens the quick settings. Now if you hit the pen, you can reposition parts on the page. I suggest you have the more used settings near the bottom.

And if you tap edit on the quick settings buttons. You can remove whatever might not be useful to you and add only what is. Something worth adding here is the Dolby Atmos button.

Multi-Pack

So, do remember the dynamic lock screen wallpaper trick. Well, did you know you can actually create your own version of this. It’s quite simple really. Just pinch the homescreen / wallpaper & style / tap the lock screen / tap wallpapers

Now if you tap on your gallery you can select multiple wallpapers that will be on rotation every time you open and close your device. But this will override the ambient wallpaper effect unfortunately.

Wallpaper Tint

Now, let's say you got a nice home screen wallpaper, but the colours aren't quite right. Well, if you pinch the homescreen / wallpaper and style / tap home screen wallpaper you’ll see the effect option. When you select this and swipe across you’ll see the colours and the dark filters. Now if you can apply a custom colour filter and dial in the ideal intensity.

Rotate home screen

Here’s a new feature which can be useful from time to time. Pinch the home screen/settings / rotate to landscape mode. This actually works well on Samsung phones now. So it might be worth switching this on.

Notifications Lock Screen Notification Cards

Ok, here’s another custom tweak that you might like. Go to Settings / Notifications / lock screen notifications. I really like the ‘cards’ option. But if you are going to use this I would recommend either ‘hide content’ or if you want more info on display on the lock screen you can tap on the settings next to the show content and switch on only the apps that you don’t mind being visible to anyone who might be near your phone.

Edge Panel Sidebar

Ok, this is a subtle bit of styling that not many people know you can do. Swipe out the edge panel. Hit the settings in the lower left corner. Now hit the back arrow, go to handle, here you can select the handle position, the colour, transparency and the size.

So like I said in the intro this is part 1 of 4. The next three are security tips and settings, usability tweaks, and of course then there’s hidden settings.