How To: Mute Shutter Sounds, Schedule Texts, Disable Status Bar Icons, & More on Your Galaxy S6

Carriers like to distinguish their Android phones from the competition by making small changes to the interface here and there. This practice is so common that Android now has a built-in system for managing these small tweaks.

A series of XML files known as CSC (customer software customization) that reside in the system folder on Samsung devices allow carriers to easily make these distinguishing tweaks. To give you an example, this is why you'll see one variant of the Galaxy S6 that can mute camera shutter sounds and another that can't.

As these files are written in XML, they're fairly easy to understand and even modify. But since they're locked away in the system partition, your phone will need to be rooted if you want to modify them. To make things even easier, long-time Samsung developer Wanam has published an app that adds a nice graphical front-end to the process of editing your CSC files.

Step 1: Install CSC Feature Expert for Samsung

Wanam's app is called CSC Feature Expert for Samsung, and it's available on the Google Play Store for free. Search it by name to get it installed, or use this link to jump straight to the install page.

Step 2: Tweak Your CSC Files

Immediately after opening CSC Feature Expert, the app will ask for Superuser access, so tap "Grant" on the popup. From here, you'll see a list of all the activated CSC features on your device, but to narrow things down a bit, tap the drop-down menu near the top of the screen and select a specific category.

To demonstrate the power of this app, I'll give you a few nice tweaks that should work for almost any variant of the Galaxy S6.

Disable the NFC Icon in the Status Bar

First, if your device shows an NFC icon in your status bar at all times when that feature is enabled, head to the "NFC" category to disable this.

From here, scroll down to the bottom of the list and select the "Status Bar Icon Type" entry. Next, change the value for this entry to Spr, then press "Save." All changes made with CSC Feature Expert will require a reboot before they'll take effect, but once you've taken care of that, the NFC icon in your status bar will disappear—even if you have NFC enabled.

Mute Shutter Sounds in Your Camera App

Next, if the Camera app on your Galaxy S6 does not have an option to mute shutter sounds, use the drop-down menu at the top of the screen to head to the "Camera" section. From here, find the "Shutter Sound Menu" entry, then set its value to true and press "Save." After a quick reboot, you should now find an entry in your Camera app's settings for disabling all sounds.

Schedule Texts & Messages to Send Later

Another cool feature is the ability to schedule a text or multimedia message to be sent at a future time. From the drop-down menu, select "Message", then scroll down to until you reach the entries for "Enable Scheduled Message" and "Enable Scheduled Msg Box" and enter "true" for both.

Then just head to the default Messages app, open a conversation thread, and select "More" from the top-right. Now you'll see an option for "Schedule message"—select the option, then choose a date and time you want the message sent at.

These are just a few examples of the types of tweaks you can make with CSC Feature Expert, but many more are possible. Now that you know your way around the app, I'd suggest looking through the various entries to see if any pique your interest.

If there are any features that you'd like to enable, a value of "true" or "enabled" should do the trick in most cases. Conversely, "false" and "disabled" are the standard values for disabling a feature, but if you're in doubt, simply look at the rest of the values in a category for reference.

What cool tweaks have you uncovered with CSC Feature Expert? Let us know in the comment section below, or drop us a line on Android Hacks' Facebook or Twitter, or Gadget Hacks' Facebook, Google+, or Twitter.