I was drowning in Galaxy notification spam until I turned on this one hidden feature - Android Police

What the report says

Android Police’s Jade Bryan Jardinico reported that a buried Samsung One UI setting, Notification Categories, helped reduce the flood of alerts on a Galaxy Z Flip 7. The article, published July 26, 2026, frames the feature as a practical way to regain control over the Android notification shade without fully muting apps that still send useful updates.

According to Android Police, Notification Categories is Samsung’s version of Android’s more granular notification controls, similar to Notification Channels on Google Pixel phones. It lets users decide which kinds of alerts an individual app may show. The author cited examples such as keeping weather, news or direct-message notifications while turning off less important prompts, sports updates, recommendations or promotional alerts.

The report says Samsung has not made the tool easy to find. Android Police noted that Samsung disabled the setting by default starting with One UI 6.1, and that on One UI 8.5 it is located under notification Advanced Settings as “Manage notification categories for each app.” Once enabled, users still have to adjust supported alert types app by app, which the article describes as time-consuming but worthwhile.

The development matters for Galaxy users because notification overload can make important messages easier to miss. Android Police also contrasted the older manual feature with Samsung’s newer AI-based Notification Highlights, saying AI tools may reduce some filtering work but are limited to recent flagship devices. The article concludes that Notification Categories remains useful even without AI, while calling on Samsung to make it more visible by default.