How to hide the Samsung Galaxy S10 punch-hole camera cutout

By now you may have noticed that the

new Samsung Galaxy S10

have a new "hole punch" design on the front camera that allows for thinner bezels along the top of the screen. Samsung went with this design to avoid the commonly hated notch; the S10E and S10 have a circular punch hole, while that the S10 Plus has a longer cutout to accommodate the dual-lens selfie camera.

But while it adds more screen real estate for these devices, some might find the puncher a bit boring to look at. If you prefer a more classic look to your phone, or at least want to disguise the puncher and make it less prominent, here are two ways to hide the cutout on the new S10 phones.

Option 1: disable punching

If you don't mind sacrificing a bit of screen to avoid camera cutout, one option is to get rid of it altogether. You can do this by going to your Settings menu and selecting Display > Full Screen Apps. you will see that the first option at the very top is “Hide front camera”.

Grid view

Enabling this option will add a black bar to the top of your device. While this effectively hides the punch-hole effect, unfortunately there appears to be a thicker bezel at the top. It also looks disproportionate since the bottom doesn't adjust not to provide a more balanced display placement between forehead and chin. The black bar will continue to display on other display modes, such as full-screen video and camera.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales/The Verge

Option 2: Dress it up!

For those who don't want to sacrifice their infinity screen, the most fun option to hide the hole-punch is to

use wallpapers to playfully disguise the cutout

.

There are already plenty of resources for finding fun wallpapers that do this. Our favorite so far is on the subreddit

r/S10wallpapers

, where community members regularly upload creative wallpapers. You can find everything from hole puncher blending with

a sloth hanging from a thick branch

, to the most eccentric like the hole punch cleverly hiding in the... uh... (

opens a new window, search for it

star wars

essential guide to vehicles and ships

), ahem, "superlaser focus lens" on the Death Star.

Simply upload your favorite, then go to Wallpapers & Themes in the Settings menu. Find the photo in your gallery and set it as your wallpaper and/or lock screen.

In the future, Samsung may offer more creative wallpapers like these in new software updates. But for now, if you can't fight it, have fun with it and adopt what you can now do on the new S10.

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