Google's hack for hidden Quick Settings labels in Android 16 is just that

Summary

• Android 16 resembles Android 12 in that its loaded with visual changes, one of which is resizable Quick Settings toggles.
• When you make toggles smaller, the label for it disappears, but shows up in the corner of the screen when you tap the toggle.
• However, tapping the toggle also triggers the corresponding action, which can be a major annoyance.

Google's operating system for smartphones is feeling like Android 12 all over again, with the latest version currently in beta — Android 16. While this version doesn't revolutionize UI design like 12 did, there's enough changing visually for any user to sit up and take notice, even if a lot of the changes seem inspired by third-party Android skins like One UI, OxygenOS, and HyperOS. One of the most significant changes that allows resizing Quick Settings tiles in Android 16 also packs a discreet trick for labeling everything suitably.

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Until Android 15, Google forced you to have large and wide toggles for the first two Quick Settings you select, a massive square for the third, and smaller circular ones for the others. With the latest OS build that got its first QPR Beta earlier this week, you get the option to set up any tile as big as you like, within the grid-like confines of the notification shade. This is just one of the visual updates shipping as a part of a new design language Google is calling Material 3 Expressive.

Proceed to make any of the Quick Settings smaller and you'll notice that its label immediately disappears. This usually isn't a major concern, until you consider that you'll want frequently used settings on the larger tiles with conveniently massive touch targets, and the smaller, lesser-used ones with icons you don't recognize, end up as smaller tiles. Google seems to be thinking two steps ahead in this case, because Telegram user sameera_s_w observed that when you tap one of these smaller tiles lacking a label, its name appears in the active apps section of the Quick Settings page, located in the lower left corner (via Android Authority).

Tapping the toggle also triggers it

And that defeats the label's purpose

The label flashes into view, and is sufficiently large to grab your attention as you watch for what's changed on the screen. That's invaluable for when Battery Saver and Battery Share toggles with similar icons are adjacent to each-other. The only downside we see in this implementation is that tapping a toggle to identify it also enables or disables the relevant setting. It's a considerable limitation because tapping the toggle triggers the device-level action, which would anyway tell me what it is, even if I tapped with the intention of pulling up the toggle's name.

For instance, I usually have screen recording set to a small tile and tapping it sets off a chain of events that may be hard to stop in time, revealing the toggle's purpose just as the name also appears. Since long-pressing a Quick Settings tile is already mapped to opening the relevant Settings menu in Android, perhaps Google can map the label reveal to a new action like a triple-tap, or something similar. To stick with familiar behavior, devs could also add a shorter tap-and-hold timeout for the name, with a longer hold still bringing up the relevant settings page.

Despite the aforementioned limitations, the new way to identify smaller tiles that don't have labels is surprisingly effective in a pinch. However, we remain hopeful for some optimization in this aspect since we are still in the beta testing phase and a stable release for Android 16 is a few months out.