Huawei Mate 10 Pro Tips, Tricks & Best Hidden Features

Huawei Mate 10 Pro tips, tricks & best hidden features: Huawei’s new super-phablet, the Mate 10 Pro is packed so full of features that it’s easy to miss some of them. Here’s our rundown of some of the most useful bits you may have missed.

Full-screen apps

One of the biggest hooks with the Mate 10 Pro is that new 18:9 aspect ratio 6-inch Full HD+ FullView display. Much like the rest of the growing contingent of phones that are taking on these newer, taller screens, some apps just aren’t built to sit naturally on that aspect ratio, but not all hope is lost.

If you launch an app that isn’t built to naturally scale to the Mate 10 Pro’s screen the phone will stick the option to expand it to fit in the void. If you’ve already switched this feature on for an app and want to revert back to its proper 16:9 aspect ratio, you’ll find the toggle in the Display section of the settings app under ‘Full-screen display’.

One-handed UI

A big screen is great for media and productivity but awkward if you spend a lot of time multitasking IRL. Huawei’s native one-handed mode is always a welcome inclusion that should be enabled by default, with a swipe along the navigation bar to activate it and a tap in the dead space around your shrunken display to expand the UI up again.

If for whatever reason this feature isn’t yet switched on, head to Smart Assistance menu and enable ‘Mini screen view’ under ‘One-handed UI’.

Navigation dock

If you prefer the one-button operation of the standard Mate 10, Pro offers a virtual alternative that you can place on-screen anywhere you want. Under ‘System navigation’ you’ll be able to activate the ‘Navigation dock’ which replaces Android’s default navigation buttons with a tap to go back, a long-press to return home and a long-press and swipe to switch apps.

You can also choose to rearrange and hide the standard navigation buttons from here if you want as well.

Apps drawer

One of the biggest departures from stock Android in Huawei’s Emotion UI overlay is the loss of the apps drawer, meaning you have to keep all of your installed apps on at least one of your home screens.

Luckily, since EMUI 5.0 Huawei’s added the ability to reintroduce the apps drawer by changing the ‘Home screen style’ option to ‘Drawer’ in the phone’s Display settings.

Always-on display

Of all the features in this rundown, the Mate 10 Pro’s always-on display is by far its most hidden asset. The ability to switch this feature on isn’t in any logical place, like the phone’s Display Settings or even the Smart Assistance menu but rather under Security & Privacy, Screen Lock & Passwords and finally Always Display Information.

Flip on the toggle you find here and you can then have the phone display a clock, the date, battery percentage and a counter for any untouched notifications you may have. You can also schedule this feature so that it’s only one between two set times.

App shortcuts

With Android 8.0 Oreo onboard, don’t forget that you can long-press on select apps to get at some handy shortcuts. This doesn’t work across the board but Huawei has added the functionality to some of its own apps as well as Google’s native offerings.

Hide albums

The Mate 10’s native gallery app is great for perusing your shots and keeping things automagically organised into people, places and things but sometimes there are some snaps that you just don’t want popping up the moment you dive into the app and that’s were hiding albums comes in.

Just open the Gallery app, swipe along to the Albums and tap the three dots labelled ‘More’ at the bottom of the screen. From here select ‘Hide albums’ and then simply toggle on the albums that you don’t want showing up every time you look at your snaps.

Check out these tips and tricks in action in our hands-on video below.