Overview
- Device Care version 13.8.80.7 began appearing Monday with a new “Block apps with excessive ads” option tied to One UI 8.5.
- Apps flagged for frequent ad alerts are put into deep sleep, which stops background activity and notifications until you manually wake them, with flagged apps listed under Settings > Device care > Care report > Excessive alerts.
- The tool offers two modes, with basic blocking using Samsung’s list of known offenders and intelligent blocking analyzing notifications in real time to decide if they are ads.
- Samsung warns the intelligent mode may misclassify some alerts, so users could see false positives as the rollout continues.
- Availability is rolling out with One UI 8.5 and has been spotted on Galaxy S26 devices in the U.S., and outlets note Samsung has not said if its own notification ads will be blocked.