- Galaxy devices running One UI 9 can now completely uninstall the pre-installed Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard app.
- Newer Samsung devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy A57, no longer ship with SwiftKey out of the box.
- The change signals that Samsung’s long-term pre-installation partnership with Microsoft is quietly winding down.
Microsoft’s SwiftKey has long earned its spot as one of the best Gboard alternatives for Android, with our own community polls recently revealing a dedicated crowd of diehard SwiftKey loyalists. But earlier this year, Microsoft started rolling out controversial account policy changes, a warning shot that ultimately culminated in the end of Google account login and cloud backups entirely.
While those login updates alienated longtime fans, millions of Samsung Galaxy owners faced a completely different problem: they couldn’t get rid of the app even if they wanted to. Thanks to a years-long agreement between Samsung and Microsoft, SwiftKey and other apps come bloat-installed on One UI devices. If you preferred Samsung’s stock keyboard or Gboard, the best you could do on One UI 8.5 was to disable SwiftKey or remove its updates. The core app permanently occupied system storage.
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