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Samsung’s One UI 8.5 made checking free storage harder because apparently math is a feature now

One UI 8.5 just made life a little more difficult for some reason

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One UI 8.5 update
Samsung

With its latest major software update, Samsung has made a tiny change to One UI, which has left Galaxy users pretty frustrated. The One UI 8.5 update has removed the available storage indicator from the Device Care menu in One UI 8.5. So now, users can only see the total storage capacity and how much space is currently used, without clearly displays the amount of free space left.

Why this update has annoyed Galaxy users

Previously, One UI showed the exact amount of available space directly in the storage section. This was a simple, intuitive, and quite useful. You get all the info you need in a single glance. Although, users now have to subtract used storage from total storage to figure out how much space remains.

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While this sounds like a minor annoyance, it becomes more irritating on higher-capacity phones. According to PiunikaWeb, owners of 512GB and 1TB Galaxy devices are among the users calling out the change, since the old interface made it easy to quickly check available storage at a glance. Reddit users have also been sharing side-by-side comparisons of One UI 8.0 and One UI 8.5, showing how the older version displayed the free-space metric more clearly.

Got to do the math now

Unfortunately, this is not a setting that you can toggle, so the workarounds aren’t that great. You can add a storage widget to the home screen to get the same info. But some users are reportedly seeing inaccurate numbers. In one example, an S25 Ultra owner said the widget showed 418GB free, while the System Monitor Edge panel showed 389GB. Refreshing the widget apparently did not fix the mismatch. The more reliable native workaround appears to be the System Monitor Edge panel, but even that still adds extra swipes and menus just to check a basic system stat.

Storage management is basic phone maintenance that is essential for people who shoot a lot of video, install big games, and use a lot of storage in general. So changing small utilities that people are used to just sours the first experience of One UI 8.5. Samsung has not said whether the old storage indicator will return in a future patch. Meaning, you’re stuck with this for at least a while.

Vikhyaat Vivek
Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience covering consumer hardware, with a focus on…
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