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How to Disable My Magazine on the Galaxy S5

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The brand new Samsung Galaxy S5 is an impressive and powerful smartphone that is absolutely packed full of hardware and software features, but not everyone needs or wants all of them.

With a stunning camera, fingerprint sensor, heart rate monitor, tons of S-Health apps for fitness and all those motion controls, the Galaxy S5 has a lot of features. One in particular is the My Magazine app (basically Flipboard) that completely takes over an entire aspect of your smartphone.

Read: Galaxy S5 vs. LG G3: 5 Things You Should Know

The Galaxy S5 has plenty of homescreens for owners to add apps and widgets, but one swipe to the left from your main screen and things end. You’re greeted with a massive full-screen “My Magazine” that takes over the entire device. Below we’ll explain what it does, and how you can disable My Magazine on the Galaxy S5.

GalaxyS5-Magazine

Much like HTC Blinkfeed this serves a purpose. My Magazine is highly customizable and allows the user to get tons of content front and center right on the device. Whether that’s news alerts, sports scores and highlights, business, art and beautiful photos or wallpapers, and even social alerts. Everything can be customized, and that includes Facebook, Twitter, and tons of other social networks.

While it’s a great news and content aggregation tool, we’ve received a lot of questions on how to disable it. If you enjoy the Galaxy S5 but don’t want My Magazine taking an entire homescreen, here’s how to remove it.

Disable My Magazine

There is more than one way to turn off the My Magazine feature on the Galaxy S5, but neither of them are very obvious. The new settings menu isn’t extremely user friendly, and hidden deep in settings you’ll find My Magazine, and how to disable it.

The easiest way takes only three taps right from your homescreen, and is extremely easy. Long press anywhere on your homescreen where you don’t have any application icons, and the Galaxy S5 will go into homescreen edit mode. This is where you change wallpapers, add widgets, or change homescreen settings with the bottom right settings icon. Tap the gear-shaped  “Home screen settings” button, and then uncheck My Magazine.

GS5-Magazine

Users can also fumble through the large settings menu on their Galaxy S5 and disable My Magazine in the same fashion. Simply head into Settings > Scroll halfway down and select the blue Home screen icon > and uncheck My Magazine in the same fashion as shown above. That’s it, you’re all set.

Read: How to Change the Galaxy S5 Lockscreen

You can now long press anywhere on your homescreen and go back to edit mode, and add pages to the left side of your main homescreen to add additional apps. If you like a certain layout with apps on each side of the homescreen, this is how you get that back. Pretty easy right?

Turn Off My Magazine

Another step some users may want to take to preserve as much space and battery as possible is to completely turn off My Magzine. The Galaxy S5 is full of bloatware and unnecessary apps, especially 3rd party bloatware from Verizon and AT&T. All of this can be disabled and actually turned off in settings. If you don’t want that application tray full of Verizon apps, turn them all off, and they’ll be gone. They’re still on the phone, but won’t show up in your app tray.

GS5-MagazineOFF

Settings > Application Manager > Swipe right to ALL > Scroll down to My Magazine > Turn off

Once you do this the My Magazine feature will be completely disabled, and also completely turned off. It will no longer be taking up valuable space on your homescreen, and won’t be visible anywhere except the list off applications in the manager detailed directly above.

If for any reason you decide you’d like to give My Magazine another try, or return the feature to show a friend, simply do the same steps above but backwards and turn it on, or re-enable in homescreen settings.

Should You Do This?

Every smartphone owner is different, and everyone uses a device a certain way. While many users and Galaxy S5 buyers can benefit from and enjoy everything My Magazine has to offer, it isn’t for everyone. This is simply a personal choice, so do as you will.

It is worth considering that My Magazine will constantly be updating multiple sources (based on customization and preferences) to deliver tons of news and information, which could negatively impact battery life. If you’re trying to get as much battery life from the Galaxy S5 as possible, disabling My Magazine may be a good idea.

In the end though it’s all about you, the user, and what you’d like to do with your smartphone. If having loads of information just a swipe and eye away is something you’d like, give My Magazine a try. If you’d rather launch Bleacher Report and Facebook manually, you’re more than welcome to do exactly that. Enjoy!

For even more Galaxy S5 information check out our 50 Tips, Tricks & Hidden Features.

19 Comments

19 Comments

  1. daliss

    07/19/2014 at 1:22 pm

    Thank you SOO MUCH!!! That was driving me crazy! Thanks for taking the time to show us how to disable it!

  2. missydhix

    08/03/2014 at 10:06 am

    Thank you bunches!! I have been trying forever to get rid of that!

  3. j518

    08/21/2014 at 9:11 pm

    This officially places you in HERO status –
    Thanks very much – – –

  4. statistical model

    08/29/2014 at 7:41 am

    Tank you so much! awsome!

  5. Elizabeth

    09/25/2014 at 7:12 am

    I just bought an S5 from Verizon & there is no option to turn off My Magazine :-(

  6. [email protected]

    10/28/2014 at 8:35 am

    Thanks a lot for the info but did this article really have to be this long to explain something so simple?

    • Cory Gunther

      10/28/2014 at 8:47 am

      The more you know..

    • Rick

      07/15/2016 at 3:28 am

      Bet you got it wrong the first time ‘cos you skipped a couple lines!

  7. monik

    10/29/2014 at 7:42 pm

    Lord thank you for this pages and this ppl that can take their time to help us it was driving me insane thank you so much it was so easy I did it wth the first step and now I’m doing it for everyone that has a galaxy s5 .

  8. Raul

    11/17/2014 at 2:50 am

    old info! Remove please, wasred my time!

  9. jad

    02/16/2015 at 1:33 pm

    Have an S5 from Verizon running Android 4.4.4. I can turn off My Magazine but then weeks later it seems to randomly get turned back on for no reason and I have to disable it again.

  10. DS

    03/09/2015 at 10:05 am

    Now if we could just find a way to keep it from re-enabling itself to keep it from running in the background. I have Unchecked it, unchecked Show Notifications ,Turned it off, and did a Force Stop. I’ve even Cleared Data and Cleared Cache, but after a little while, it shows it’s running in the background again. When I go back to the App Info for it, the Force Stop button is active so it can be clicked again, but the app won’t STAY off… I even tried a tip using the Developer controls, but that didn’t stop it from reactivating itself to run in the background. I have not rooted my phone, and won’t as long as my new phone is under warranty, but if that’s what it takes to keep something like this unwanted app from running, I may consider it.

  11. roe

    06/12/2015 at 10:44 am

    NOPE….. the TURN OFF button says DISABLE on mine, and it doesn’t afford me the opportunity to click it…. it’s in the ‘shadows’…. now what?

    • goaskalicem

      06/15/2015 at 5:23 pm

      I have the same situation, Roe. Not allowed to Disable.

      HELP!

  12. Fairies_wear_boots

    06/30/2015 at 11:04 pm

    Am I doing something wrong? You say an amazing camera but it will not focus, and my photos are terrible with the front or back camera. It’s on auto and yes the plastic has been removed. It’s just terrible! One of the reasons I switched from HTC one m8 was because I thought the camera was supposed to be comparable, but this is just plain terrible! :(

  13. Jj

    10/14/2015 at 9:30 pm

    Thank you!

  14. rickws

    05/08/2016 at 6:20 pm

    Android has turned into a 6 year old girlie phone. Why are these being directed at children. I so want to root my phone to get rid of this lameass operating system that gives you absolutely no control of your phone.

  15. Jimmy kidd

    07/14/2016 at 9:53 am

    You can’t disable it morons the disable is grey I know this because it’s background running is causing me to not be able to play mortal kombat x app. See everything you own and kill yourself son.

  16. lindsay

    10/15/2016 at 7:44 am

    Your instructions to turn off my magazine don’t work! I have a gs5. Removing it from your home page will not turn it off! It just hides it in the apps mgr. And in the apps mgr. You can only force stop it. And when you turn your phone off and back on again my magazine will be up and running! I want to know how to delete or disable it completely

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