How to View Notifications on the Galaxy S10 Lock Screen?

With the introduction of Android 5.0 Lollipop, Android devices began showing notifications directly on the lock screen. Some enjoyed this feature while others disliked it. Samsung has made a compromise with this change on the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10e. By default, these are minimized but you can view them with a single tap on the icons.

The transition to replacing widgets on Android’s lock screens with notifications was quite the controversial one. Granted, the change made sense in an overall view of the situation but it ended up making a lot of people upset. Before Lollipop, people could put widgets on the lock screen that displayed personalized information.

That isn’t to say notifications aren’t personal or anything, but letting people pick a widget to be displayed on the lock screen was vital for a lot of people. Most would just use a clock or something but calendar widgets were very popular for this very use case. However, Google saw that most people didn’t use the feature so they changed it to something that more people would use.

Since then, not much has changed with the lock screen for most Android devices. An OEM always has the ability to add their own flair/changes to it if they want but most just stuck with some combination of the time, date, weather, and notifications. A lot of these OEMs even added a feature that lets you disable notifications from being displayed on the lock screen.

I know I have done those tutorials for previous Samsung devices as it was a requested feature that I saw in the tutorial and video comments. A lot of people like a clean lock screen so the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10 Lite, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10e have combined these with One UI and removed the option altogether.

So let me show you what has changed and how to view your notifications.

As you can see, the notifications are still there. The thing that has changed is that they are now minimized on the lock screen. You can see from the image in this tutorial that the icons are present on the lock screen. I noticed this and went looking for a way to show them like normal.

I had simply assumed the option would still be in the Settings app somewhere and that they were just being minimized by default. That doesn’t seem to be the case though (from what I can find as of writing this) but I did find a different way of viewing these notifications while you are still on the lock screen.

For those who don’t want to watch the video to see the feature in action, I point you to the image in this tutorial again. You can see that when I am viewing the lock screen (and have notifications waiting for me) that there are some icons tucked away right under the day and date of the lock screen.

Viewing Galaxy S10 Lock Screen Notifications

All we have to do is tap on those icons and the notifications (along with some Quick Settings icons) are then expanded from the top of the screen. The animation makes it seem like you can see these by swiping down from the top of the display but that doesn’t work and only shows the full Quick Settings panel.

I would like to see this changed to work just like it does when the device is unlocked. I feel that would make the UX a more cohesive experience but the way Samsung has implemented it isn’t terrible. I actually like that the notifications are minimized to icons while still being easily accessed with a simple tap.