Over the years, OnePlus has built its Game Mode from an annoying piece of bloatware to something that’s actually useful when playing mobile games. This can help improve performance, prevent annoying notifications from appearing on your games, and give you the tools you need to better communicate and even live stream your games.
Game mode starts automatically when the OnePlus 10T (opens in a new tab) detects that a game has been launched, and detected games will automatically appear in the dedicated game launcher. While some OnePlus users have been annoyed by the presence of Game Mode over the years, Game Mode can actually be quite useful if you play top Android games. (opens in a new tab).
How does gaming mode work on the OnePlus 10T?
When you launch an application recognized as Game by the game launcher, you will immediately see a pop-up appear on the screen stating that “CPU, GPU, Network” is being optimized. It looks like the image below.
Once this appears, you can bring up the Game Mode Control Panel at any time by swiping in from the top left or top right corner of the screen.
I find swiping from the top right corner to be the most effective. Swiping from the top left corner will sometimes lower the status bar, as games don’t scale completely to the left side of the screen to avoid being obstructed by the front camera.
With the control panel open, you can immediately see the time, phone temperature, and remaining battery percentage. You can also adjust the screen brightness by sliding the bar at the bottom of the game mode control panel, or just tap the auto-brightness icon in the bottom right to let the phone do it for you.
The game mode control panel has many options laid out in a paginated grid, with six options filling each page. Swipe left or right to browse these pages. At the end of the page carousel, you will find an edit button. Tap this button to change any of the icons you see in the control panel.
1. To remove options you don’t want in the control panel, tap the minus sign next to any icon in the right panel.
2. To add options to the control panel, tap the plus sign next to any icon in the left panel.
3. To rearrange an option, long press the icon you want to move, then drag it to the desired location on the page. To move it to another page, drag the icon to the leftmost or rightmost part of the page to move forward or backward through the carousel.
How to Change Performance Options in Game Mode
Game Mode is meant to improve the performance of your games, keep messages and other notifications from annoying you, and even allow for better communication during gameplay without interrupting or quitting your game.
Let’s start with the performance settings. Launch a game and follow these steps to adjust performance-related options:
1. Open the control panel by slide inward from the upper left or upper right corner of the screen.
2. Press performance.
3. Select your favorite refresh rate. A standard refresh rate will save the most battery and may prevent stuttering on some games.
4. Select your favorite tactile response assess. By default, Ultra provides the best tactile feedback by sampling the screen at 360Hz, which will make every touch instantaneous. Power saving is only recommended when your battery is low, as it will introduce some touch latency by reducing the sample rate.
5. You can select the default power saving modes at the bottom by selecting low power, balanced or pro gamer modes.
How to adjust the sound of your voice in game mode
One of the coolest features of the OnePlus 10T’s Game Mode is the voice modulation feature which can completely change your voice when talking in any online game. Whatever your reasons, sometimes it’s nice to be heard differently, especially in online games where harassment tends to run wild. Here’s how.
1. Start a Game of your choice on your phone.
2. Open the control panel by slide inward from the upper left or upper right corner of the screen.
3. Press the voice modulator option. By default, the voice modulator is on the second page of the game mode control panel.
4. Press the Continue button to switch to options.
5. Select the High Where Deep options to select the frequency at which the OnePlus 10T will modulate your voice. Select Do when you have made your selection.
6. For more customization, you can select one of the preset voices on the next page.
7. Preview your voice by long pressing the microphone button, saying something, then releasing to hear the recording in the selected voice.
8. For more voice modulation options, including Discord-only mode, select settings cog in the upper right corner of the voice modulation menu.
What else can I do with Game Mode on the OnePlus 10T?
Game Mode is not just the control panel that can be opened while playing a game. It is also a dedicated game launcher and has several other key options worth looking into. Check out the dedicated game launcher by opening your app drawer and tapping Games to open the launcher.
From here, you can launch any game installed on your phone and explore more game mode features by tapping the overflow menu – these are the three dots at the top right of the game launcher – then press settings.
Here you will find a number of useful features such as:
- Answer calls on speakerphone, which will answer any incoming phone call through the phone’s speaker instead of requiring you to hold it to your ear. Very useful when you can’t pause a game but important phone calls come in anyway.
- Brightness Lock, which will prevent auto-brightness from messing up your gameplay. No one wants to play a game on a black screen!
- 4D vibration, which will use OnePlus’ excellent haptics engine to vibrate with different types of audio and visual prompts. Some games perform better than others with this setting, but give it a try if you enjoy a quality haptic experience.
- Lightning Start will remember commonly played games so they don’t have to be completely restarted every time you want to play. That doesn’t mean they are functioning in the background, instead, that apps are kept in a suspended state instead of being completely flushed from memory.
Notification style is my favorite setting here because it lets you change how notifications are displayed while gaming. While many phones have a gaming mode that completely blocks incoming notifications – something you can also set in the game’s control panel, if you prefer – OnePlus offers the option to turn those annoying notifications into simple text that scrolls across the screen, or stylish dashes that cross the screen so you can preview a message without that it does not bother you.
My favorite style is bullet notifications, which look like the image below (the text at the top of the screen). This is Great discreet, but still offers gamers the ability to read notifications without missing a beat.
How to disable game mode on the OnePlus 10T?
If you’d rather not enable Game Mode at all, disabling it is a fairly simple task. Here’s how:
1. Open the app drawer on your OnePlus 10T home screen and tap Games to open the game launcher.
2. Press the overflow menu – these are the three dots at the top right of the game launcher – then press settings.
3. Tap the option next to game tools to disable the game mode control panel.
