Samsung One UI 8.5 could bring a new way to help you deal with your notification overload

• Another new One UI 8.5 feature has been spotted
• It's called Prioritize notifications, and works as you would expect
• A beta program could start sometime in November

The best Samsung phones are in line to get a big Samsung One UI 8.5 software upgrade within the next few months, and the latest feature to leak from the update should make it easier to manage the pile of notifications that show up every day.

As flagged up by SammyGuru, a leaked One UI 8.5 build has shown a new feature called Prioritize notifications, which does exactly what you might expect given the name: applies a higher status to some of your incoming alerts.

"Notifications that may be important will appear above other notifications to make sure you don't miss them," reads the blurb for the feature. "You can choose whether to prioritize notifications for each app in the app's notification settings."

There's no further indication of how this might all work in practice, but it sounds useful – improvements to notification management are always welcome. The description of the feature also mentions that the necessary content processing is done locally, so nothing gets sent back to the cloud.

Coming soon

We're expecting to see One UI 8.5 roll out at some point after the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S26 phones, but a beta trial could get underway as early as next month. Of course there's no guarantee that the Prioritize notifications feature will make it to the final version of the software – it's going to change and evolve before its full launch.

There have been rumors of delays with Samsung's upcoming flagship phone series for 2026, but it's not clear if this will affect One UI 8.5, which may roll out in full around January or February time – ahead of One UI 9.0 in the middle of 2026.

We've already seen a leaked hands-on video of Samsung One UI 8.5, which also revealed that the software upgrade could be introducing a double-tap gesture that works on the back of the phone, much like iOS.

With other leaks showing off a variety of design changes and camera tweaks, One UI 8.5 is set to be a relatively major upgrade. We will of course let you know as soon as Samsung makes anything official.

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