Galaxy S6: Pie Controls

Not everyone likes hardware buttons and not everyone likes software buttons on the screen. So let’s see how we can enable pie controls on the Galaxy S6.

Pie controls was something that I was introduced to when I started using the Paranoid Android custom ROM. Those developers had created features like that and Halo and it really set them apart from the rest of the ROMs that were available. When switch to other ROMs(especially stock), it was the pie controls that I was always missing. Even the LG G3/G4’s way to hide the navigation keys was nice, but it didn’t quite hit the spot that pie controls did for me.

Android is so customizable that you can change just about anything you want, as long as you know what you’re doing.

The Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge has made a lot of people happy with the amazing camera quality and a version of TouchWiz that is finally optimized for performance. Not everyone enjoys the capacitive hardware buttons though and I certainly don’t blame them for that. It can be annoying to try to hold the phone a certain way and then have the recents screen pop up because your hand or thumb accidentally hit the button. So let’s talk about how we can fix that.

I have previously talked about how to disable those buttons and I did another article talking about how to enable the software keys for Android. Let’s take this a step further though and get pie controls working instead of the traditional software navigation buttons. As with those tutorials, you will need root access to your Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge in order to do this.

Galaxy S6 Pie Controls

1. Root the Galaxy S6
2. Disable the Hardware Capacitive Buttons on the Galaxy S6
3. Download and Install the Pie Control Application
4. Configure the Pie Control Application How You Want it
5. Press the ‘Apply’ Button at the Bottom
6. Close/Minimize the Pie Control Application
7. Reboot Your Galaxy S6

Explanation

So to start off, you’re going to have to root the Galaxy S6 and then you’re going to have to disable the capacitive buttons on the device. Technically, you don’t need to disable these buttons but if you want to do that and then use pie controls instead then that is what this tutorial will teach you. Once you edit that file to disable the hardware buttons, I would recommend downloading and installing the Pie Control application before you reboot. I think it’s smart to go ahead and download that, as well as set it up before you restart so that you’ll still be able to navigate through Android.

You can set up Pie Control to activate on the left, right or the bottom, whichever is best for you. The application is also very customizable so you can go with a minimal approach, like I did in the screenshot above. Or you can go advanced and by adding in all sorts of buttons and information, like you see at the very top of this article. The choice really is up to you and everything just works the way you would expect pie controls to work. All you have to do is slide your finger or thumb in from the edge of the screen(left edge, right edge or bottom edge) and then your navigation buttons are there.

Then just slide your thumb to the button that you want to activate(like the home button) and then let go of the screen for it to press the home button. The only thing about pie controls is that it doesn’t play very well with App Pinning. Since you need to press and hold two buttons at the same time, I haven’t figured out a way to disable app pinning once it has been enabled. Maybe there are some readers who knows how to do this and can help to explain it in the comments section below.