Among the preinstalled apps Samsung ships with every new smartphone, the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard has always been a near-constant presence, able to be disabled but never truly removable from the phone.
With One UI 9.0 Beta 5 this small but annoying limitation seems finally to be overcome: on a Galaxy S26 Ultra with the latest build it has been possible to completely remove the app, freeing about 55 MB of space, as small as this detail may seem on a modern smartphone.
Farewell to the Limbo Between Disabling and Uninstalling: How Things Will Change for SwiftKey on Samsung Galaxy
Until One UI 8.5, the most you could do with SwiftKey was disable it or remove its updates, still leaving the app somewhere in the phone memory, even if unused.
With the latest beta build of One UI 9.0 that distinction disappears: SwiftKey becomes an app like many others, completely uninstallable for those who prefer to rely on Gboard, another third‑party keyboard, or simply not want to see it among installed apps anymore.
Who Has the Stable Version Already, and Who Has Only the Beta
Here the distinction matters, and it’s worth being precise: One UI 9.0 stable is available out of the box, only on the new Galaxy Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra and Galaxy Z Flip 8.
Galaxy S26 Ultra on which the uninstall has been verified, however, has not yet received the stable One UI 9.0 update, and tests were conducted on the Beta 5 version.
A Bigger Hint Than a Simple Keyboard
There is a detail that goes beyond the convenience of freeing a few dozen megabytes: this move arrives at a time when the presence of Microsoft apps on Samsung devices seems to be thinning.
OneDrive, for example, has already been removed from the Gallery app on some models, and now SwiftKey also loses its status as an untouchable app. Put together, these signals suggest a cooling of the long-standing pre‑installation agreement between Samsung and Microsoft, even if, for now, it remains a hypothesis based on clues.
For all the news on One UI and upcoming Samsung updates, you can find our most recent articles in the Samsung section of GizChina.it.
