Android 16 has a cool trick to help you identify small Quick Setting tiles

Android 16 is getting plenty of visual tweaks, including the Material 3 Expressive design style. One of the more notable visual changes is the redesigned Quick Settings panel, which will allow you to resize tiles to make them smaller or larger.

Making a Quick Setting tile smaller means the accompanying text (e.g. Bluetooth, Quick Share, Flashlight) will disappear. Fortunately, Telegram user sameera_s_w discovered that Google is working on a nifty solution, and we were able to confirm this. More specifically, tapping a small tile will result in its name flashing in the active apps field at the bottom of the quick settings menu. Check out our screen recording below.

This is a very helpful addition and a smart use of the active apps field. It’s not as good as having the title on the tile itself, which allows you to see what you’re pressing before you actually press it. Nevertheless, this is a good compromise and pretty convenient if you want to have lots of small tiles.

Google has already released the first Android 16 QPR1 beta, which includes the revised Quick Settings panel and other changes. So you can install it on your Pixel phone if you’d like to check out these visual improvements. Of course, you shouldn’t install this software on your primary phone as it’s not meant for daily usage just yet.