Three of Samsung’s best-known camera features are missing from the Galaxy S26 FE camera app when you first open it. Night, Single Take and Dual Rec no longer sit in the More menu where Galaxy owners have found them for years. Two of them are still on the phone, buried in places you would only find by accident. The third is switched off entirely. Getting all three back as proper modes takes a separate app from the Galaxy Store and about a minute of menu work.
Why the Galaxy S26 FE camera modes disappeared
This is not a bug and it is not specific to the FE. Samsung documents the change on its own support site. Its India support page for these modes states that starting with One UI 8.5, the three modes were integrated into the Photo and Video modes rather than kept as separate entries in More. The Galaxy S26 FE ships with One UI 9, which carries the same layout forward.
Integrated is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Here is where each mode actually went:
- Night is now a moon icon that appears at the bottom of Photo mode, but only when the phone decides the scene is dark enough. Samsung’s documentation says you can then cycle it between Off, Auto and Max.
- Dual Rec lives in the quick controls inside Video mode. Samsung describes it as simultaneous recording from the front and rear cameras.
- Single Take has no shortcut at all. It is off by default. Samsung describes it as capturing multiple photos and videos in one shot.
The practical cost lands hardest on Night. Because the moon icon only shows up once the phone has judged a scene to be low-light, you cannot force Night mode in the borderline cases. Those are exactly the shots where it tends to help most: an indoor room with a lamp on, a street at dusk, a restaurant table. The dedicated mode is always available and always yours to choose. The automatic toggle is not.
How to restore Night, Single Take and Dual Rec on the Galaxy S26 FE
You need Camera Assistant, a first-party Samsung app that adds settings the stock camera app does not expose. It is not always preinstalled. If it is missing, the camera settings screen offers an install link, or you can search for it in the Galaxy Store directly.
- Open the Camera app.
- Tap the four-dot Quick controls button at the top of the viewfinder.
- Tap the gear-shaped Settings button.
- Scroll down and select Camera Assistant. If you see an Install button here, tap it, wait for the download, then reopen Camera Assistant.
- Scroll to the Additional modes section.
- Toggle on Night, Single take and Dual rec.
- Go back to the camera and swipe across to More. All three should now be listed as dedicated modes.
Samsung’s own Australian support article walks through the same sequence, including the Install step, so the process is not an unofficial workaround. It is the supported route Samsung expects you to take.
What this changes, and what it does not
Nothing is being restored that Samsung removed from the hardware. All three modes still work exactly as before once enabled, and the toggles survive reboots. What has changed is discoverability. A feature that used to be two swipes away is now four taps deep in a settings screen inside a companion app, and Samsung’s own note on the support page is that available options may vary by model.
There is a defensible argument for the change. The More menu had grown crowded, and most people shooting a dark scene do want the phone to handle Night mode for them. But the trade is real, and it is not spelled out anywhere in the phone’s setup flow. A buyer moving from an older Galaxy has no way of knowing that Single Take still exists, let alone that a separate app controls it.
The same steps apply to other Galaxy phones running One UI 8.5 or One UI 9, not just the FE. If you picked up the phone through a US carrier promotion, we covered the AT&T Galaxy S26 FE deal earlier this month.
Sources: Samsung India support, Samsung Australia support, SamMobile
