Samsung One UI 8.5 leak shows new ‘Block apps with excessive ads’ option on Galaxy phones

If you use a Galaxy phone, the pattern is familiar. You pull down the notification shade to check a message or bank alert and instead see promos from an app store, a shopping app, a game, or some service you barely remember installing. Over time, that constant stream of “offers” turns the notification bar into a noisy billboard. Samsung now seems ready to let the software push back. A recent leak from an early One UI 8.5 build shows a new setting inside the Device care section called “Block apps with excessive ads”. The description suggests that the phone will watch how often apps push ad-like notifications and step in when things go too far. Samsung has not announced the feature yet, but the wording in those screenshots is clear enough to show what it is trying to do.

The feature appears to work in two modes. In a basic mode, the system can act on apps Samsung already recognises as sending too many ad-style notifications. On top of that, there is an intelligent mode that uses on-device analysis to look at what notifications actually say and decide if they are promotional. The promise is that this checking happens locally on the phone, which matters at a time when people are more cautious about what data leaves their devices.

Once an app is flagged, One UI 8.5 can push it into deep sleep. Deep sleep is not new on Galaxy phones; it is already used today for apps you rarely open, so they cannot run in the background or wake themselves up. With the new update, Samsung is reusing the same idea for noisy apps, not just unused ones. If an app cannot wake itself whenever it likes, it cannot keep filling the notification shade with junk.

There is an obvious trade-off. If an app goes into deep sleep, you may miss some genuine alerts from it as well. This feature will make the most sense for apps you do not rely on in real time, such as shopping apps that ping you several times a day, game launchers, wallpaper and theme apps, coupon and deal services, and other tools that lean heavily on notifications to pull you back in. For services you depend on, such as payments, banking, ride hailing, food delivery, tickets and work tools, you will still want to manage notifications yourself instead of letting One UI silence them completely.

One UI 8.5 is expected to be based on Android 16 and likely to debut on the Galaxy S26 series before rolling out to recent flagships and upper mid-range models. Because this is still pre-release software, the exact placement, name and behaviour of the “excessive ads” option can change, but its presence in internal builds suggests Samsung plans to include it in a future release.

Right now, One UI already gives you ways to push back, but they demand effort. You can go into Settings, open the notifications page, and adjust channels for each app so that only transactional alerts stay on while marketing pings are muted. Device care already lets you put certain apps to sleep or deep sleep to limit their background activity. In reality, most people simply swipe notifications away and live with the clutter instead of digging through menus.

That is where a system level guard, even an imperfect one, starts to matter. Instead of assuming every user will fine-tune dozens of apps, Samsung is accepting that the phone itself has to do more of the work. The new feature will not remove ads inside apps, will not catch every annoying alert, and will almost certainly make a few wrong calls at first, especially in the intelligent mode. But if it can quietly push even a handful of the loudest offenders into deep sleep, everyday use will feel calmer.

The real test will begin once One UI 8.5 reaches beta users in different regions. If the blocking is too soft, no one will notice a change. If it is too strict, people will complain about missing important alerts and turn the feature off. Somewhere in between is a balance where the worst spammy apps are contained while critical services still reach you. For now, the message is clear that Samsung has heard Galaxy users around the world who are tired of notification spam, and One UI 8.5 is shaping up to be its first serious answer at the system level.