The Galaxy S8’s Separate App Sound feature is a game-changer… if only it worked properly

There are a ton of features packed inside the Galaxy S8, so many in fact it’s damn near impossible to cover them all. Because of this, we expected a few features to sort of fly under the radar.

While there was a little noise made about the phone’s Bluetooth 5.0 and dual-audio feature — which allows you to connect to 2 Bluetooth audio devices simultaneously — you probably haven’t heard about the Galaxy S8’s surprisingly awesome Separate app sound feature.

What is it?

Separate app sound allows you to pick an app and choose where you want the sound to play — either through a connected Bluetooth audio device or the phone itself– totally independent of the other apps on your device.

For instance, you could tell the S8 to only play Spotify through the Bluetooth speaker, while playing sound from anything else (YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, games, etc.) through the phone speaker. This is an absolute game-changer. Well, it would be if it worked properly…

Now, I couldn’t technically get this feature to work in the way I described above. I was, however, able to choose an app and tell the phone to play it through my phone speaker, all the while keeping Spotify and every other app playing normally through my Bluetooth speaker. So while it kind of worked, you’ll be stuck jumping into your Settings and picking an app to essentially whitelist if you don’t want its sound streaming to your to your Bluetooth audio device while listening to music.

As someone who often finds himself the car’s “designated DJ” while driving around town, this is the perfect way to play music wirelessly through the car’s speakers, while still enjoying the occasional viral video on Reddit without ruining jams for everyone else.