Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: 7 ways the S Pen makes phone one-of-a-kind

S Pen on Samsung’s 2023 flagship

The S Pen has been part of the Galaxy S line-up since the launch of the Galaxy S22 Ultra early last year. The stylus is also present on the latest Galaxy S23 Ultra. While there are no new features for the S Pen on Samsung’s 2023 flagship, it makes for a fun, productive tool to use. I like using it as a remote for my camera shutter. Here are seven smart things to do with the S Pen on the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Screen-off memo

Right after you take out the S Pen from the phone, the screen turns black for you to write on it. It allows you to jot down phone numbers, notes, and random thoughts without unlocking your phone. I love using it to take notes while I’m in a meeting. You can use the screen-off memo by taking out your S Pen, writing on the display and tapping on Save after you are done.

Annotate PDFs with Samsung Notes

As a freelancer, I get a lot of documents to sign, and after shifting from the Galaxy S22 Ultra to the iPhone 13 Pro Max last year, I missed the S Pen for this one exact feature. It lets me sign, comment or sketch on PDFs as and when required. To make things easier, you can choose Samsung Notes as the default PDF reader, so all PDF documents are opened within the app. You can then tap on the pen icon at the top and enter the edit mode. It also lets you save and export the document in various file formats.

Notification previews

Due to my random sleep schedule and late night work hours, I can’t reply to emails throughout the day. They mostly sit there in my notification tray for me to look at later. The notification preview feature allows me to look through the emails with the S Pen without opening them. While it isn’t supported by all apps, I mostly use it for Gmail.

Remote control for various tasks

The S Pen acts as a remote control for various tasks on the Galaxy S23 Ultra. From taking photos to controlling music, you can do it all.

The camera shortcut comes in use when you need to put the phone at a distance to capture wider shots, like a group selfie. All you need to do is take out the S Pen and keep the Galaxy S23 Ultra at the place you want to and click the button on the stylus. You can also use the S Pen to zoom in or zoom out by the circle gesture.

When listening to music, you can press the S Pen button to play or pause the playback. It works with Spotify and YouTube. The stylus also lets you control video presentations.

Smart Select

The S Pen can help you take a screenshot in any shape or size. You can choose from freeform, circle, rectangle and save the portion of the screen you want to. You can also remove the background from an image or add text and drawing as per your needs. I mostly use it to grab screenshots in freeform.

Penup

This app is for mobile artists who want to use their Galaxy S23 Ultra as a canvas. Penup gives you options from art outlines that you can colour, and also provides tutorials to help you create drawings. You can also challenge the S Pen community within the app.

Other miscellaneous stuff

Using the S Pen, you can magnify and blow up the content on your screen to 150 percent, 200 percent, 250 percent, and 300 percent. It helps in certain scenarios where a PDF document’s font is too small and it won’t let you zoom in. The S Pen also lets you create reminders or jot down notes within Samsung Calendar. You can also shoot a video or an image and scribble over it to send it to someone using Live Messages.

There are a bunch of other S Pen features that I don’t use in day-to-day life but you might find useful. One is Translate, which allows you to translate text to and from any language by just selecting ‘Translate’ from Air Commands with the S Pen. Another feature called Bixby Vision helps you identify things on your phone screen.

One of the best S Pen features is Anywhere actions, which allows you to set a custom gesture for your Galaxy S23 Ultra. You need to go to S Pen settings > Air Actions. You can now configure certain air gestures to your preferences.