There’s a hidden menu in Android that lets you unlock experimental features — here’s how to use it

Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider

You can do a lot with Android. Google’s mobile OS is famously open to customization, and plenty of apps take advantage of that fact. 

But you might not know that Google itself keeps a few settings tucked away in a hidden menu called the System UI Tuner.

It’s not available on every device — you’ll have less luck if yours has a heavy UI skin — but it's worth checking out to see which features might be coming to future Android versions. Some of the features it brought to last year’s Android 6.0 Marshmallow update — where it was first introduced – are now standard with Android 7.0 Nougat.

Here’s how to access the System UI Tuner, and a quick rundown of what it can do with Android 7.0.

If you’re familiar with the chrome://flags shortcut in Google Chrome, the System UI Tuner is more or less that. To activate it, pull down the Quick Settings menu, then hold down on the gear icon in the top right corner until it starts spinning. It should take 5-7 seconds.

Let go, and you’ll see this little notification at the bottom of your display.

You’ll know everything’s fine if you see a little wrench symbol next to the gear.