While having the Galaxy Store and the Play Store on your Samsung Galaxy smartphone offers versatility, it's not always ideal. The Galaxy Store provides access to apps designed for your Galaxy device, but its notifications and promotional pushes can be annoying.
These disrupt your user experience and consume valuable resources like RAM in the background. It's a bummer to spend money on one of the best Android phones on the market and be annoyed by ads. There are simple fixes to prevent these disturbances on your Samsung phone. Let's break it down below.
Samsung Galaxy Store: What is it, and why is it necessary?
Nearly every Android phone comes with the Google Play Store, which has millionss of apps. On the other hand, the Galaxy Store is designed exclusively for Samsung smartphones. This comes from Samsung's approach of using its own One UI version of Android and creating Samsung-specific programs like Samsung Health and Samsung Pay based on stock Android apps.
These apps are updated via the Galaxy Store, which cannot be removed as a system app. This setup allows Samsung to send users spam ads, cluttering screens and notifications. This resource-hungry app drains your battery, RAM, and storage. The silver lining is that you can mute these ad notifications or turn off the app.
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How to turn off Galaxy Store notifications on your phone or tablet
This approach lets you filter out bothersome ad notifications, and you'll still be notified of important updates.
- Go to the Galaxy Store on your home screen or app drawer.
- Go to the lower-right corner and tap the Menu button.
- Tap the Settings button with the gear icon in the upper-right corner.
- Toggle off Get news and special offers. This gives you notifications about sales and promotions.
- Tap Notifications to get to Galaxy Store's general Android settings.
- You can't turn off notifications for the Galaxy Store, but you can set Alerts to Silent so that they don't bother you.
- Tap Notification categories.
- Turn notification categories on or off as desired.
Turning off notifications for app updates doesn't stop the automatic updating of core services if you leave the feature activated. The Galaxy Store remains active, tapping into your phone's resources for app updates.
How to deactivate the Galaxy Store on your Samsung phone or tablet
This method no longer appears to work on phones running recent versions of One UI. As of May 1, 2024, we have been unable to identify a way to turn off all Galaxy Store notifications. We've reached out to Samsung and will update this post when we learn more.
If you don't use the pre-installed apps and don't need to update them, it's a good idea to turn off the Galaxy Store. It's a good way to save RAM, battery life, and storage space.
- Open the Settings app on your Samsung phone.
- Scroll down to Apps and tap to open.
- Search for Galaxy Store and open the app.
- Tap the hamburger menu located in the upper-right corner of your screen.
- From the pop-up menu, select Uninstall updates.
- After successfully uninstalling updates from the Galaxy Store app, you'll see the Disable button at the bottom of your screen.
- Tap the Disable button.
- Accept the warning notice.
- The Galaxy Store is deactivated on your Samsung phone.
Not Recommended: Uninstall the Galaxy Store
If you truly want to get done with Galaxy Store notifications and ads, you can uninstall the app using Android Debug Bridge (ADB). We DO NOT recommend uninstalling the Galaxy Store as it may prove difficult to update apps installed via the app and cause other issues. If you are familiar with ADB, terminal commands, and Android, and you're willing to risk the consequences of uninstalling the Galaxy Store, Explaining Android walks you through the steps to uninstall the Galaxy Store. We've embedded the video below, but you may want to click though, as there are several videos that can help you if you get stuck.
Your phone, your rules
Although it's impossible to turn off every Galaxy Store notification, you can get rid of the most annoying ones. That's a win in our book. If you aren't done with your mission to stop all the ad bombardments, there are different solutions to get rid of bad ads on your Android phone or tablet. It's your phone, and you call the shots. Take the wheel, tweak things your way, and enjoy a smoother experience on your device.
