Tired of ads in your notifications? How to use One UI 8.5's secret feature to block them

If you have a smartphone, you almost certainly have to deal with apps sending you ad notifications. Whether it’s for a new product, an ongoing sale, or whatever else, few things are as annoying as having your notifications filled with advertising like this.

But what if I told you that you could now filter out those advertising notifications so you don’t receive them? If you have a Samsung phone running the One UI 8.5 beta, that’s now possible thanks to Samsung’s new “Block apps with excessive ads” setting. It’s buried deep in One UI 8.5, but it could very well be the update’s best-kept secret. Here’s how to find and use it.

How to block advertising notifications in One UI 8.5

The first thing to do is ensure you have a Samsung phone running the One UI 8.5 beta. You can download the One UI 8.5 beta now for the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Galaxy S25 Ultra. If you don’t have one of those phones, or if you prefer not to use beta software, you’ll get this feature when One UI 8.5 rolls out to everyone — likely in early 2026.

Assuming you do have One UI 8.5 on your phone, here’s where to find the ad-blocking feature:

1. Open the Settings app on your phone.
2. Scroll down, then tap Device care.
3. Tap the three dots in the upper-right corner.
4. Tap Settings.
5. Tap Block apps with excessive ads.

Samsung’s ad-blocking feature is enabled by default using the Basic blocking mode. With basic blocking, any apps Samsung has already flagged as sending frequent/excessive ads are blocked whenever they’re detected on your phone. Samsung doesn’t say which apps these include or how many there are, but they’re presumably apps that are well-known or notorious for their notification advertising.

Additionally, if you want maximum blocking power, you can tap the toggle at the bottom of the page to turn on Intelligent blocking, a super-charged version of the basic blocking that’s enabled by default. With intelligent blocking, all your notifications are analyzed in real time to determine whether they’re ads; if they are and they’re frequent, they’re blocked.

Some people may not love the idea of Samsung analyzing their notifications like this, and if that includes you, you can continue on with basic blocking. But if you want to limit ad notifications as much as possible, you’ll probably want to activate intelligent blocking.

Finally, you can tap Excessive alerts near the top of the screen to view any apps Samsung has marked as sending excessive advertising notifications.

I’ve only had One UI 8.5 on my Galaxy S25 for a couple of days, so it’s too early to tell how effective (or not) this excessive ad-blocking feature is. Still, as someone who can’t stand ad notifications, I’ve turned on intelligent blocking and am letting Samsung block as many advertisements as possible. And if you hate ads as much as I do, you’ll probably want to do the same.