Galaxy phones running One UI 9.0 can finally delete Microsoft SwiftKey outright, rather than merely disabling it. SamMobile confirmed this first-hand on its own Galaxy S26 Ultra running One UI 9.0 Beta 5, where tapping Uninstall removed the keyboard completely and freed up around 55MB of internal storage. On One UI 8.5 the most any Galaxy owner could do was strip its updates and disable it, leaving the base app permanently parked in system storage.
What changes for Galaxy owners on One UI 9.0
SwiftKey has never been the default keyboard on a Galaxy phone — Samsung Keyboard is — so for most owners it has been a preinstalled app they never opened and could not remove. That is the specific complaint One UI 9.0 answers. The app now behaves like any user-installed app: long-press, uninstall, gone, with the storage back.
Two things are worth keeping in proportion here. First, 55MB is not a lot of storage on a phone that ships with 256GB or more; the win is control and a less cluttered app drawer, not capacity. Second, this is behaviour observed on a beta build. Samsung has not announced the change, published it in a changelog, or committed to it shipping in the stable One UI 9.0 release — and preinstall arrangements are commercial deals that can be renewed. Until Samsung says something on the record, treat this as how the beta behaves rather than a policy Samsung has promised to keep.
It is also worth noting what has not changed. Removing SwiftKey does nothing about the rest of what arrives on a new Galaxy, and Samsung has not extended full uninstall rights across the board. Being able to delete one keyboard is a small correction to a long-standing arrangement in which the phone you paid for came with software chosen by someone else’s contract.
Newer Galaxy phones no longer ship with SwiftKey at all
The bigger signal is upstream of the uninstall button. SamMobile reports that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra do not come with SwiftKey preinstalled in the first place, and expects the same of the Galaxy Z Flip 8 since it also runs One UI 9.0 out of the box. Some recent A-series handsets, including the Galaxy A57, ship without it too.
That sits alongside the long-running Samsung–Microsoft bundling arrangement that put Office, OneDrive, OneNote and SwiftKey on Galaxy devices, with OneDrive wired into the Gallery and My Files apps, OneNote into Samsung Notes and Microsoft To Do into Reminders. Samsung has already ended OneDrive backup integration in the Gallery app. SamMobile’s read is that the deal appears to be no longer active, and that this is likely why the uninstall restriction has been lifted — a reasonable inference from the pattern, but an inference: neither Samsung nor Microsoft has confirmed the arrangement has lapsed.
How to remove SwiftKey if you are running One UI 9.0
- Open the app drawer and long-press the Microsoft SwiftKey AI Keyboard icon, or go to Settings > Apps and select it from the list.
- Tap Uninstall and confirm.
- If SwiftKey was your active keyboard, switch to Samsung Keyboard or Gboard first from your keyboard settings, so you are not left without an input method.
If Uninstall is greyed out and only Disable is offered, your device is not on a One UI 9.0 build with the change. For context on what else Samsung is doing with this release, see our coverage of the One UI 9 home screen search bar.
Source: SamMobile
