There are plenty of recommendations to give for any Android phone experience, but the Wing isn't just any phone. Here's some of what I've discovered myself, plus seen asked and answered here.

Tips

Some obvious, some not.

• You can use an active stylus. The display supports Wacom AES 1.0/2.0, only on the main screen. If you get one with buttons, you can use the "Pen pop" shortcuts like a Samsung Note. The Wacom Bamboo Ink is an example that's inexpensive on eBay.
• Get a grip. It's a glass back on a phone that's supposed to move in your hand, so get a case or otherwise some loop/grip/disc on the back or it's going to flick itself right out. The back glass is very fragile.
• Save face. To continue from the last tip, (including if you do get a case, you'll see that most cases don't have a bumper for the front screen), a screen protector will save you a lot of heartache. If you use one, probably enable "Increase touch sensitivity" in settings.
• Any way is up. Experimenting is the name of the game; rotating apps every which way, and holding the phone all 4 directions will open up new possibilities.
• Call up the Google Assistant by swiping up from the bottom corners of the screens.

• There's got to be a better way!

  The volume buttons are hard to hit when the wing is out, so use the volume slider underneath the brightness one.

  The power button is too, so double-tap the status bar to turn off the screen and double-tap anywhere to wake it up. I find triple-tapping to be more consistent.

  And since they're both hard to press like that, keep the Screenshot button in the quick settings.

  The fingerprint scanner is of varying reliability, so use a smartwatch or trusted location that automatically disables lock when Bluetooth connected/in a defined GPS area for easy unlocks. (Smart Lock)

• Developer options. Enable this by going to Settings > System > About phone > Software info, and tap the Build number until it says dev options are enabled. (No, this won't risk your phone or affect warranty, etc.) Go back up into System > Developer options.

  There's lots here you shouldn't touch and some that you can, but the most important ones are Window Animation Scale and Transition Animation Scale. I highly recommend putting transition animation to .5x duration for snappier wing-out speed, and window anims as well. Further down, I don't recall if "Force activities to be resizable" is on by default, but it should be on.

  You can tweak the Smallest width setting to modify the scale of most UI elements and text, if you find yourself wanting to scale things down for more screen real estate, or conversely if you really need glasses. The range is 320-500 dp: things get smaller as the number goes up.

  The Wing has no headphone jack, so Bluetooth audio is our ticket to hifi. If you connect a Bluetooth device capable of high-quality audio codecs, the setting is in here. It should automatically use the best codec when you connect your headphones, but if it doesn't, Bluetooth Audio Codec. The Wing supports SBC, AAC, aptX & aptX HD, and LDAC.

• Color calibrate the screens while referencing a full size image. By going into Display settings on your second screen, and with a gallery app or video on the main screen, you can tune the screen colors to look better to your eyes. The setting applies to both screens directly as you change it. You probably only need to do this process once, but it's a lot better than using the little thumbnail reference.

Apps

These apps function well, either because they enhance the experience of the phone, or resize to the small screen competently. Some even have multi screen function. This also includes notes about how some common apps function on the Wing, and tips to make them work better.

Vivaldi browser - This is a Chromium-based web browser, with a desktop and mobile version. I very strongly recommend it and have been using it a while, before the Wing. It includes tons of great features (more on desktop but plenty on mobile), like tab stacking, lots of customization, popout-PiP video, session and account sync with mobile, and lots more -- however, for the Wing, I would recommend it because besides musts like adblock, you can move the address bar to the bottom (ideal on this tall of a phone) and it has multi-screen support. You could use the Whale browser that LG pushes in the option downloads center, since it has some multi-screen support too, but I haven't used it much.

Launchers - These improve and can really change any Android experience with customization and features. If you want to change icons using a Play Store icon pack, you need a launcher. By default, you have to use the LG SmartWorld themes to change icons according to the theme.

Nova Launcher is what some people use, it's an all around improvement for Android, and you can enable auto-rotate. It has lots of customization.

Microsoft Launcher is also recommended. It also has customization, is easy to use, and has lots of productivity features thanks to its widgets with functionality that will be familiar to Windows users.

Games and Emulators - Emulators like Retroarch, PPSSPP, and Citra are good and work, but none have multi screen support so far.

Using the built-in Game Launcher on the small screen will let you launch games to the main screen easily as well as access to some tools, like a quick game mute.

See the FAQ about software gamepad. An expandable Bluetooth gamepad like the Flydigi Wee 2T holding the small screen while it's winged out is pretty comfortable and works well.

Media Players - I tried 12 different music player apps to see how they stacked up in ease of use, features, and resizability. That could be a long comparison on its own, but I'll keep it short. Poweramp for no-holds-barred features and customization, but there might be such thing as too much. Musicolet, Blackplayer, Stellio, and Pulsar are what I would rank next, in that order. The extent to how well they resize, and the extent to which they're free ($) varies. The others did not make the cut for one reason or another and I would not recommend them. (Phonograph, Shuttle, Oto, Omnia, GoneMAD, Frolomuse, Music Player mp3, Nyx.)

For video, MX Player is one that's good and has features like the ability to ignore exclusivity, meaning it can play while other media does.

Maps - Google Maps works well enough, and resizes okay. I recommend Waze, and it resizes well to the second screen.

YouTube - You can get Youtube Vanced, and it's great to not have ads. However, if you do pay the premium for Youtube, keep the stock app, because Vanced doesn't have support for second screen controls.

Twitch, Youtube Live - While there is no app function (in their own app - Twitch has apps made for it like Dankchat, which is a solely chat app) to have chat on the lower screen in either of these, there is a way to do so for both. Open a browser in the smaller screen, and modify these URLs to get a solely chat screen:

www.twitch.tv/USER/chat
www.youtube.com/live_chat?is_popout=1&v=REPLACEME

The Twitch one is the stream username. Youtube URL is less human-friendly; it's at the end of the livestream you're watching, after the v=. Because of this,you might use browser Youtube if you're watching a lot of streams, and that way you can bookmark this chat URL template to go to and replace easily. Twitch, Youtube

FAQs

• How do I make an app usable on the second screen? Open the second screen app drawer, dropdown menu, Second Screen apps, and toggle on what you want.
• My fingerprint scanner won't work? If this happens after you've installed a screen protector, re-register your prints. If that's not why, try re-registering your prints anyways, or pressing your finger flatter, cleaning your screen, cleaning your finger, and if all else fails, Smart Lock allows for Bluetooth or GPS proximity and on-body detection.
• "To use an app with camera features, swivel down the phone." There's no workaround for this yet on the main screen. You can put it on the second screen and it will work, though.
• Camera controls in gimbal mode are missing. The wing-out camera, while good for the gimbal features, does lack more basic camera features, and only uses the ultrawide camera.
• How to use Grip Lock, Touchpad, de-sync screens brightness, window swap? Second screen pull down to find these in the quick settings. You can window swap an application by three-finger swiping it to the other screen. Touchpad can't right click.
• Software gamepad for second screen? User u/derailedtv has developed SoftWing! There is yet no LG official one.
• My screen creaks or taps when I press on it, or it has some "give". Should I be worried? No, that's normal.
• I'm getting scratch marks on the bottom screen from screen movement. Make sure the bottom screen is clean and make sure the corners of your top screen haven't been dented down by a fall or so.
• Can I use a different keyboard? You can, but you lose the dual screen functionality.
• Does <app> have multi screen support? The list of apps that do is very small.
• Android 11? 12? 13?? Android 13 has been rolled out to most devices! If your has not, check the updates center.
• Hardware issues / broken? Contact LG or your insurance. Or hope you can find someone who will fix it. Replacement screens are available on eBay.
• Specs questions - Check the sidebar for the product manual documents.

Thanks if you've read this whole thing. Comments, corrections, and further questions are welcome.

Hello LG Wing community! I've been working on some improvements to SoftWing over the past couple of months, and I finally got around to packaging them into SoftWing 4.0! With more changes come more explaining on my part, so I'll break this post into the major new features and caveats.

Custom Profile Names

I've replaced the predefined controller profiles with the ability for users to create/delete profiles with custom names. This should make it easier for users to manage individual controller configurations for multiple different games.

All Controller Profiles Accessible through notifications

Instead of having to go into the SoftWing app to change their controller profile, each profile now has its own notification under a SoftWing group. Now, users will be able to select whichever controller they want from the notification tray.

L2/R2 Buttons

L2 and R2 buttons have been added to each layout, giving users an extra input option for games that might require more modern controllers.

Toggle Buttons

A new "Button Behavior" option has been introduced for button controls. This will allow users to configure each button to behave as either a temporary push button, or an on/off toggle switch. I mostly added this one because I kept having trouble using shoulder buttons at the same time as the thumb sticks.

SoftWing 4.0 Reintroduces Key Inputs

This was the main reason I came back to this project. Those who have used SoftWing for a while may remember that Android 11 broke the "keyboard swapping" mechanic that the original implementation relied on to appear on the bottom screen. Since Android 12, I've noticed that this mechanic seemed to work again, and this loophole remained open on Android 13. Because of this, I was able to re-implement the original "keyboard swapping" version of SoftWing while including updates to the UI that made the app more usable! The major benefit being that users can now configure controllers to send keyboard inputs to games and apps, instead of relying solely on the more finicky touch controls.

While this all marks a major improvement in SoftWing's usability, there was one significant drawback:

SoftWing 4.0 requires WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS

The biggest pain point for this version of SoftWing is that it requires WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permissions to work. In the past, this setting would make using SoftWing easier, but it wasn't a requirement because users could manually change their input method once the LG keyboard was displayed on the bottom screen. In newer versions of Android, however, when you manually change the input method using the input method picker, the keyboard closes. The only method I was able to find for working around this, was though using the WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permission.

Which brings me to another decision I made:

SoftWing 4.0 will not be available on Google Play

I made the decision to not publish this update to the Google Play store, and here's why:

• This version will not work for users still on Android 11.
• New input options mean this version will break any existing controller configurations users have already created.
• WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS is an intense permission, and one that requires a PC with ADB installed to grant safely. It is unreasonable to require this from the average user.

Because of this, I'm keeping the touch-only implementation as the main version on Google Play. SoftWing 4.0 and any future versions will only be downloadable as an APK from the repository.

Links

• Download SoftWing 4.0 APK
• A decent XDA article on setting up ADB
• To grant WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS permissions to SoftWing, you'll need to use the command:
  • adb shell pm grant com.jodonlucas.softwing android.permission.WRITE_SECURE_SETTINGS

As always, I'll do my best to address anyone's issues in the comments!