How to Access the Game Launcher of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge

If you want to collect up all of your installed games, and enable a way to save battery life while playing, then you want the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher.

With the launch of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung introduced a new feature into TouchWiz called Game Launcher. This feature actually has a few things that can enhance our gaming experience on both of these devices and they’re all quite useful in their own respect.

Firstly, the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher will create an application icon on the Home Screen that will house all of your games (basically like a folder). When you launch this app icon, you’ll get a list of all the games you have installed on your device.

From here, we have the ability to mute all notifications and alerts while are in a game we’re playing. This is great in case you don’t want that email notification popping up while you’re in an intense gaming session. Just remember if you enable this then you could miss out on some important notifications and alerts. There’s also a couple of options here that will let us save battery life while we’re playing the games here. They’re blanket on/off options instead of being granular for each game, but it’s still a great little feature to have in case you want to save some battery life while you’re playing.

So let me show you where this feature is hidden at and how to access it.

Galaxy S7 Game Launcher

1. Launch the Settings Application
2. Scroll Down and Tap on the ‘Advanced Features’ Option
3. Tap the ‘Games’ Option at the Very Top
4. Tap on the ‘Game Launcher’ Option
5. Then Tap on the On/Off Toggle to Enable or Disable it

Explanation

So, to access this feature, we need to dive into the Settings application and then look for the Advanced Features option. In here, at least at the top of my screen, I have the Games option that I tap on. Then, there are two options here for the Game Launcher and the Game Tools. You can check out the Galaxy S7 Game Tools feature here, but let’s just stick to the Game Launcher for today. Once we finish digging through the settings menu, we can enable this feature and it will drop a Game Launcher icon on the home screen.

When you launch this Game Launcher app, it will just bring up a list of the games you have installed on the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge. If there’s a game you have installed that isn’t showing in this list, then you can manually add them right from the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher. We also have the ability to silence any notifications and alerts while we are playing one of these games. The only alerts that will pass through are phone calls, so there’s no way to get around this (unless you use a 3rd-party application). It will restrict all text messages, app notifications, emails, etc. from bothering you while you’re playing.

You may also see some game suggestions in the list as well. So don’t get paranoid if you see a game here that you haven’t previously installed. These will be marked with down arrow badges as they’re trying to suggest that you download them. The real important feature here, at least in my opinion, is the ability to save some battery life while you’re playing a game. If you look right under the spot where you can manually add games, you’ll see a feature here that will let you change the power saving options that are built into the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher feature.

There are three options here. One is to disable this power saving feature and it is disabled by default. The middle option will tell the Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge to lower the resolution and limit the frames per second to 30 (instead of 60 like it normally is). Then, at the bottom we have an even more aggressive power saving mode. This more aggressive mode will keep the frames per second at 30, just like the middle option, but it will also reduce the resolution even lower (compared to the middle option). These options are all or nothing so there doesn’t seem to be a way (as of writing this) to set a specific power saving feature to specific games.

So you might have to go through here and change these options depending on which game you’re currently wanting to play. For example, if you’re playing something like Dead Trigger, and you want the graphics to not be reduced, then you’ll most likely want to disable this power saving feature from within the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher. However, if you then decide to switch over to something like Candy Crush, then you most likely don’t care about graphics and you can crank the power saving feature up to max. It really is up to you and your preferences because who knows, maybe you enjoy playing Dead Trigger with low quality graphics.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this and it will all depend on what you prefer the most. Using the power saving feature will no only save you some battery life, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it also kept the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge from getting as hot or warm as it normally would if you didn’t enable the power saving feature here. This will all depend on the game though and it should definitely be something that you experiment with as you can always revert things back to normal if you don’t like the changes.

Have you found the Galaxy S7 Game Launcher feature to be of any use? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts down in the comments section below.