9 Hidden Tips And Tricks Every Samsung Galaxy Buds Owner Should Know About

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Anyone who’s ever bought a Galaxy device before knows there are plenty of features only Samsung devices have, and that’s just as true of Samsung Galaxy Buds. The brand has been releasing wireless audio products for many years, like the Gear IconX from 2016 and the current Galaxy Buds series launched in 2019. A big draw is their range of extra features.

The current generation, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4, was released in early 2026 as the latest iteration to bring Samsung’s tech smarts to your ears. The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro brought plenty of new features and tools, but they continue the most important draw to these earbuds: their plentiful hidden features and tools they offer to owners.

If you currently own a pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds, whether it’s the newest version or the originals (or anything in between), you’ve probably used quite a few of its neat tools — but there are likely more that you’ve yet to discover. These include some important tips and tricks that can help you make the most of your buds.

One of the most important tools that earbud users should know about — that’s right, most earbuds have it, including the Samsung Galaxy Buds — is an equalizer. An equalizer, often shortened to EQ, is a tool that lets you change how your music sounds by letting you change the volume of different frequencies. For example, you can increase the “oomph” of your bass or reduce the prominence of treble. These are frequently used by earbud owners to tweak sound for personal taste, as it’s the setting that often holds back your music-listening experience.

So if you own Samsung Galaxy Buds, it’s worth knowing how to change its equalizer settings to see if you can enjoy the earbuds more. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to find these settings to explore: They’re in the Galaxy Wearable app on Android, or Buds app on iOS. In the app, open the Earbuds Settings page, and then press Equalizer. This’ll bring up the EQ graph that let you adjust the slider to change how your music sounds, or select presets that easily do the mixing work for you.

Here’s a feature that makes your Samsung Galaxy earbuds sound amazing — if you own one of the best Samsung Galaxy phones, that is. It works on almost all models of Galaxy phone released in the last few years.

If you own a Samsung phone and earbuds, you can use the former to enable SSC on the latter. This stands for Samsung Scalable Codec (though some call it Seamless Codec), and it’s a tech designed by the company to improve the sound of audio, by restoring any quality lost when the music is streamed wirelessly. It allows for 24 bit/96 kilohertz, which means it’ll let you make the most of Spotify Lossless Audio which also lets you use that bitrate. It’s really popular amongst Samsung fans, and some swear it’s better than alternative codices like AAC and SBC.

On Samsung Galaxy Buds, you can enable SSC by going to the earbuds’ app, selecting Sound Quality and effects, going into the Advanced Quality Options menu, and then toggling Ultra high quality (UHQ) audio. As soon as you select this, your phone will start using SSC to improve the way your music sounds.

Like many other earbuds, the Samsung Galaxy Buds offer touch controls to let you change your song or adjust the volume without having to rely on your smartphone. On the first two generations of Galaxy Bud, this is done by tapping or swiping the flat touchpad shown in the picture above, and on later devices like the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro (which we reviewed), Samsung opted for a sensor on the ear stem, which you pinch or swipe.

It’s a useful feature when on-the-go, but not everyone knows that you can actually change what the touch pad or gestures do. By going into the Galaxy Wearable app and selecting Touch Controls, you can change what tapping and holding does; you can change the action to be opening Spotify, enabling Bixby Voice or changing your ANC mode.

A new feature was enabled on the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 called Head Gestures, which lets you accept or decline calls, or interact with Bixby, all by shaking or nodding your head. Again, you’ll need the app to do this, as the feature is off by default, and you can’t customize what your gestures do.

Not every Samsung Galaxy Buds model has silicon ear tips: the Galaxy Buds 3 and Buds 4 do, but the Buds 3 Pro and Buds 4 Pro don’t. Whether you want tips or not is an important decision in choosing which Galaxy buds you pick, or whether you ditch earbuds for headphones to get away from, either.

It’s worth knowing that the Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro models have very fragile ear tips, as noted by reviewers who find them easy to accidentally rip when being removed. Design problems like this caused the Buds 3 Pro to be delayed, as early testers were damaging them. And, it doesn’t help that the brand’s proprietary tip locking system makes the tips rather hard to remove. So if you plan to switch out the default ear tips for some other ones, make sure you’re doing so with care.

Making this trickier is that many users recommend swapping out the in-box earbuds with third-party alternatives, so you may have to engage with this feature if you plan to make the most of your earbuds. One of the most frequent pieces of advice you see online surrounding the Galaxy Buds is about taking care when you’re replacing the tips, so it’s clearly an important consideration.

If you own the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 or Buds 4 (or the Pro equivalents), there’s a special feature available to you that’ll provide a truly bespoke sound profile. That’s because these models have a listening test, as long as you use them alongside a One UI 7 device, and the results will dictate your music.

In the Galaxy Wearable app, if you head on over to the Earbuds Settings option, and then Accessibility and Adapt Sound, you’ll see a list of ages. This is a collection of presets, which will make small adjustments to your music EQ based on your age. But what you’re looking for is the option for a Hearing Test. Everyone’s ears are slightly different, and so we hear music — and sound — in different ways. This is called Auraldiversity, and because listening is unique, earbud makers often develop hearing tests like this to identify how your ears perform and then adapt sound quality to match.

For example, if your ears fail to pick up higher frequencies, the listening test will recognize this and boost these sounds so you can hear them better. A quick test will allow you to enjoy music that’s best suited to your unique hearing — and will also save you from having to spend lots of the time with the equalizer function, too.

Samsung’s recent Galaxy Buds releases aren’t exactly the best earbuds for people with small ears. Online commenters are constantly criticizing the fit of Samsung’s earbuds, and many professional reviewers also point out that their unreliable fit can adversely affect music quality. Perhaps most tellingly, Samsung itself released guides on how best to wear Galaxy Buds, which points to the buds’ inability to stay in people’s ears being a major problem.

If you’ve faced this issue, an industry has sprung up to address it. Retailers like Amazon are awash with purchasable add-ons, which you can attach to the Galaxy Buds to increase their stability. Different brands sell multi-layer ear tips, clip-on hooks to turn your buds into ersatz workout headphones, or ridged wings that will help your buds stay in your ear. Samsung itself used to offer the latter, like in the Gear IconX shown above. If you’ve been loving how your Galaxy Buds sound but don’t like how they keep falling out of your ears, then a few dollars could be the difference between a fantastic or infuriating experience.

One of Samsung’s more unusual features is designed to address and cure motion sickness. This is via an app called Hearapy, which can be downloaded from the Play Store. When used, Hearapy puts out a 100 hertz of sine wave, which is based on research that suggests a minute of this tone can improve motion sickness. According to Samsung, this can improve your balance and reduce symptoms of motion sickness when you’re on a car journey.

The catch with Hearapy is that it only works on the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro — officially, at least. Some testers report that it worked fine for them on older earbuds, but, according to Samsung, only the newer top-end product offers the right drivers for the function to work properly.

Journalists who’ve used Samsung’s Hearapy app report that it does have a palpable effect, which was echoed by some online users, although some others who’ve used it report getting a strange ringing sound, akin to tinnitus, for a short duration after using it.

If you’re the kind of person who is constantly jumping between different apps or tools on your smartphone, then you’ll probably appreciate the fact that your phone keeps its sound settings consistent between them all. You won’t struggle to hear one app and then get deafened by another. But certain other users might want to set up different audio presets in each app, and, luckily, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 and Buds 4 models allow you to do this if you have a Samsung phone on One UI 7.

Changing the sound settings per app is incredibly simple: All you need to do is open the earbuds settings in the swipe-down menu, and change the specific function you want modified, like dialogue boost or a new equalizer preset. Your phone will remember the choice you make, and will automatically re-apply it every time you open this app. Don’t make the mistake many online users do: If you change the sound settings in any other way, your changes will be applied generally, and not just to this one app.

Some use cases in which this could be useful, are for applying the dialogue booster to streaming apps but ensuring it’s off when you listen to music, or enabling different equalization presets for games, streaming apps and music players. You can also choose to apply 360 audio, useful for watching movies, or loudness normalization to stop intrusive ads being too loud.

Your Samsung Galaxy Buds case is a useful little extra that does more than holds the buds when they’re not in use. It can be used to apply updates, protect them, and charge them up — and even though the sheer number of earbuds with better battery life that the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro suggest they could be doing a better job at some of those tasks, they’re still vital parts of the earbud experience. So they deserve to be treated well, and that can sometimes be harder than it seems. Certain past Galaxy Buds have been criticized for easily-scuffable case, which isn’t ideal if you’ve paid lots of money for your gadget.

Instead of risking their Galaxy Buds, many people choose to buy cases for their cases for extra protection. We’ve seen carbon fiber, shockproof Galaxy Buds 3 cases and drop-protected Galaxy Buds 4 Pro cases that have locking mechanisms. Some people alternatively buy cases for other reasons; there are picks with fun and personality-driven designs, like games controller-themed ones, or magnetic shells that’ll easily clip onto wireless chargers. Via its website, Samsung sells various models like Minions or food can themed ones, as well as magnet and carabiner-toting alternatives. While you can buy charging cases if your current one breaks, they’re often more expensive than an extra protective shell would be, making a case for your case a no-brainer.