There are so many reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, but none of them mentions this one feature that makes this tablet (and the majority of the Samsung Galaxy Tab range) one of the best family or multi-person tablets.
The feature I am referring to is the ability to have separate user profiles on these tablets. For the purpose of this article, I will be referring to the latest and biggest Samsung Tablet – the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra which I own.
Let me set the scene for you –
You buy a tablet and spend hours setting it up just the way you like it, downloading apps, arranging the home screen to your liking, logging into the apps, changing the settings and fine-tuning it to exactly how you want it.
Then another family member asks to “borrow” or use the tablet and ends up logging you out of apps like Facebook and Instagram so that they can check their news feed.
They also start searching for things using a browser that is logged into your Google account – which in turn messes up your search history (let’s face it, Google is tracking all this activity to serve your ads).
The next thing you know, you see adverts everywhere in your social media feeds, any web pages you visit, for something completely unrelated or not of interest to you – all because you let someone else use your tablet. On top of that, you need to log back into your apps because you were logged out. Sound familiar?
Samsung Galaxy Tablets have the ability to allow multi-user accounts so everyone can have their own separate apps, wallpapers and settings as you would find on a desktop PC or laptop.
The S5, 6, 7, 7+, and S8 and their variants (Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra – My current tablet) all have this feature.
This feature makes the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and its variants iPad killers, especially for families.
I believe there may be more Android tablets that have this feature as it is an Android feature rather than just a Samsung feature but I haven’t had a chance to check out other tablets to see if they have it.
Drop a comment below with the names of other tablets that you have come across that have this feature.
If you are an individual that never has to share a tablet – then you can pick any tablet – even if I had that luxury, I would still pick my Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra over an iPad any day.
If you are a family and want to share the tablet – then, in my opinion, you have no option other than an Android tablet like the Samsung ones.
To activate this feature and set it up, this is what you do:
Settings ->
Accounts and backup ->
Users ->
Add User or Profile ->
Select ‘User’ ->
Click ‘OK’ to the pop up message ->
Name the user ->
Wait for user to be created ->
Click on switch to ‘username’ ->
Click ‘Set up now’ to go through the set up.
- Click start to continue
- Connect to your wifi or continue if you are already connected.
- Accept the agreements (I only accept whats required and skip the optional ones)
- you can create a new goggle account, sign in with an existing one or skip the google account sign in all together.
- If you skip it you wont be able to download apps, music, games and other content from google play as per the warning message.
- You can then set up your profile exactly how you want it and sign in whenever you want.
To switch between profiles, you can click on the icon in the top right-hand side of the screen and it will give you a list of the available profiles on the device.
Make sure you set up some security on your profile like a pin if you don’t want another family member snooping on your data.
The very first user that is set up when you get the tablet is the administrator of the device and can create the other profiles. I don’t think you can change admins to anyone else after that.
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