One UI 8 makes a fundamental UI design change on Galaxy tablets

The Galaxy Tab S11 and the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra are the first tablets to run Android 16 (One UI 8.0) out of the box. Besides improved Samsung DeX and Secure Folder, the new software makes one major fundamental change to the UI design on tablets.

On tablets running One UI 8.0, notifications appear in a floating island rather than taking up the whole screen. The island appears in the centre, left, or right side of the screen, depending on where you swipe. Swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen opens the Quick Panel, and even that appears in a floating island.

Up until One UI 7.0, the notifications section took up the entire screen, but actual notifications only appeared as a small part of that section, while the rest of the background was blurred. The newer design uses the screen real estate in a better way, as notifications appear in a small section, allowing you to see other things on the screen in the background.

This is how stock Android behaved on tablets, and One UI 8.0 is now adopting that UI. Other tablets could also get the same UI with the One UI 8.0 update, which will start rolling out later this month. You can see the list of One UI 8.0 eligible tablets here.

In the image above, you can see how the notifications panel appears on tablets in One UI 8.0.

With this new update, Samsung has also changed the way how Secure Folder and Samsung DeX fundamentally work. Secure Folder is now based on Android 15's Private Space feature, while Samsung DeX is based on Android 16's Desktop Mode feature.