One UI 8.5 may be able to protect you from photosensitive epilepsy

Last week, we got to see images of Samsung’s upcoming One UI 8.5 for Galaxy smartphones, which revealed that it will offer major user interface design changes. Well, it looks like more people have now gotten their hands on the firmware, and while digging into it to find new features, they seem to have discovered a very useful one: The ability to protect people from photosensitive epilepsy (PSE) due to content on the screen.

In One UI 8.5, folks at Android Authority have discovered lines of code for a feature that will lower the brightness of the display when it detects flashing lights. The description for the feature reads “When watching video content, any part that includes a repeated strobe effect exceeding a certain level will be dimmed. This effect can only work on the display of this device and may not be supported depending on some app development environments.”

The lines of code also suggest that Samsung may let people customise when the feature should kick in. More specifically, it may let you set at what flashing intensity the feature should start lowering the brightness. An option to customise how much it should reduce the brightness will also be very useful. The “video content” part in the description suggests that this feature may only work with videos and not in games, which is disappointing.

Samsung is expected to debut One UI 8.5 with the Galaxy S26 series, which is said to offer an upgraded display. Considering that, it will be interesting to see if the South Korean tech giant offers the PSE protection feature only to the Galaxy S26 lineup or to older devices as well.