How to: Turn Off HTC One (M8) Voice Dial Gesture, Other Motion Launch Gestures

HTC may be in a neck-and-neck battle with Samsung for king of the gimmicks, but even I can admit that they innovated or at least created something useful in one area – the lock screen with Motion Launch Gestures on the HTC One (M8). Motion Launch Gestures allow you to quickly wake your phone, unlock it, jump to your home screen, launch BlinkFeed, or even activate a voice dialer for making mostly-hands-free calls. Most of the gestures are incredibly useful, especially since the phone is uncomfortably tall with a lock/wake button placed at its very top. With these gestures, you almost never need to press that button.

But what if you find the gestures to be a nuisance? For example, we have found that voice dialing on the M8 is mostly miss, with a few hits here and there. It’s also confusing to dismiss should you accidentally activate it, since there isn’t a cancel button. 

The good news is that you turn all or some individual parts of these Motion Launch Gestures off.

If you head into Settings>Displays & gestures>Motion Launch gestures, you’ll find a box to turn off all gestures at the very top. If you’d like to keep all but “Quick call” or voice dialing active, simply uncheck the box for “Quick call.” That will at least keep the other gestures active.

And there you have it!