Android 17 is here on the Pixel (but later this year, many other devices will get it), and while everyone’s talking about the big features (like app bubbles), the changes I like most are the small ones you’d never find unless you went looking. Three hidden settings completely changed how my phone looks and feels — I can’t figure out why they aren’t on by default. Here’s how to turn on all three.
I found 3 Android features so useful I’m confused why they ship disabled
Why aren’t these already on?
Hide Icon Labels
For that clean, minimal look
For a long time you’ve been able to use any launcher on Android (like the minimal Niagara launcher which just added themes), but without a separate launcher you’ve not been able to do the one thing that I always prefer to do to make my homescreen clean and minimal: remove app icon labels.
In Android 17, you can remove app icon labels easily by tapping and holding anywhere on the homescreen > Wallpaper & style > Icons > Names > Turn off Show app names.
Turning off names shows more of your wallpaper, and you don’t really need them — you already recognize every app by its icon.
Another thing you can do to make your phone look better is to turn on dark mode on every app — and new in Android 17 is a setting that forces apps that have still not been updated with a proper dark mode to be less bright.
Dark mode every app
Even if the developer still doesn’t support it
It’s been years since Android got a system-wide dark mode toggle. Dark mode is easier on battery life since most phones use OLED screens where each pixel provides its own light, so black pixels = almost no power use for those black pixels.
Android 17 adds a somewhat hidden toggle that forces every app, even the rare ones that still don’t have a proper dark mode (looking at you, Microsoft, and your LinkedIn app).
It’s called Expanded Dark Mode, and it’s easy to turn on. Do this: Settings > Display & touch > Dark theme > Expanded. And that’s it.
Even LinkedIn gets the blacked-out treatment
It was honestly difficult to find a mainstream app on Android that still doesn’t have dark mode in 2026. That is, until I opened LinkedIn, which stays bright white even when you turn on system-wide dark mode. But when you enable Android 17’s Expanded Dark Mode, it forces every app, including LinkedIn, to take on a full dark mode.
The only downside here is that forcing dark mode on apps not built for it could result in weird display issues. I haven’t encountered any, but it’s something that you might run into if you enable this feature.
There’s one more quick change to Android 17 you should know about since it’s not obvious, and it has to do with the always-handy flashlight.
Make your flashlight much brighter
We finally get a brightness slider for the torch
This is a minor but very helpful new feature in Android 17 that is easy to miss. You can now adjust the intensity of the flashlight, which is great beacuse I use the flashlight on my phone often. To do this, just long press the flashlight toggle in quick settings in the notification panel and you’ll see the Flashlight Intensity slider. If you don’t see the flashlight toggle in the notification panel, do this: open the notification panel with two fingers to reveal the quick settings > tap the pencil icon > scroll to Utilities > tap the plus icon next to Flashlight.
The one place I use this constantly is at night. When one of my kids wakes up and I need to check on them, the flashlight at full blast is enough to wake the whole house — and me up completely. Dropping it to the lowest setting gives me just enough light to see without lighting up the whole room.
Android 17 does a lot of fine-tuning
There’s a lot more new in Android 17 to make things better, but there’s nothing game-changing overall
There are a lot of great features in Android 17 beyond the three mentioned here.
Chief among them is app bubbles, a new way of multitasking that keeps four of your most-used apps at the ready, hovering above whatever you’re doing. There’s also Screen Reactions, which plays a piece of content in the background while you record a reaction video through the selfie camera — perfect for social content, if you’re into that.
But the features I keep coming back to are the quiet ones, like the three in this article. Why bury them? Probably because Android has hit a level of maturity where most updates are incremental, quality-of-life improvements — helpful, but not the kind of thing that gets a splashy announcement. That’s exactly what these three settings are: small changes that just make your phone easier to live with.
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Tensor G5
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