How to enable Quick Reply from the Lockscreen on Samsung Galaxy Devices running Nougat

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Android Nougat was a huge update for fans of the stock Android experience. Besides official multi-window support and a whole host of other changes, the update also brought a new quick reply feature to allow you to reply to messages from the notification shade without opening the app in question.

Before the 5th Android N Developer Preview, users were able to quick reply to notifications even behind a secure lock screen. However, Google removed the feature from subsequent builds of Android N, but the Director of UX for Android promised that the team would bring it back as soon as possible. Well, we now have our first Android O Developer Preview, but this feature is still nowhere in sight.

Fortunately, though, if you own a Samsung Galaxy device running an official build of Android 7.0 Nougat (such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge), then you can enable this feature manually. The feature is hidden by default on the Samsung Experience software, but we can enable it using a simple ADB command.

Note: I’ve tested this on an AT&T Samsung Galaxy S7 running official Android 7.0 Nougat, but I don’t have any reason to believe this shouldn’t work on all devices running the stock Samsung Experience software based on Android 7.0. Furthermore, this trick may work on devices from other manufacturers as well, however I was unable to get this to work on my Huawei Mate 9 or on the OnePlus 3T.

Enable Quick Reply from the Lockscreen

As we mentioned before, we will be issuing an ADB command to our device in order to enable quick reply from the lockscreen. If you haven’t already enabled ADB access, then follow these steps below. If you have, then skip ahead to the next section.

Setting up ADB

First, download the ADB binary straight from Google for your particular OS and extract it to a separate directory on your computer. Next, install the proper driver for your particular phone. Then, enable “USB Debugging” in Settings –> Developer Options. If you don’t see Developer Options, then you will need to enable it by going to Settings –> About Phone then tapping on Build number 7 times. Finally, ensure that ADB is working by starting a command prompt in the same directory as the ADB binary (right-click –> “open command prompt here”) and run the following command:

adb devices

If you see your device’s serial number (and it doesn’t say unauthorized), you’re golden. If you see a pop-up on your phone asking you to grant your computer ADB access, then say yes. If you don’t see either happen, then try rebooting your computer/phone and re-plugging it into your computer. Otherwise, try re-installing the driver.

Send the ADB Command

Once you’ve confirmed ADB access is working, open up a command prompt and enter the following command:

adb shell settings put secure lock_screen_allow_remote_input 1

This setting change should take affect immediately without needing a reboot, at least it did for me. You should now be able to reply to notifications from your lock screen, provided the app supports it. Apps like Telegram and Hangouts support the notification quick reply, as well as most modern text messaging clients, so give this a shot!

Let us know if this trick works for your Samsung Galaxy device! If it works on your non-Samsung device, let us know about that too!