Samsung is adding ads to its Family Hub smart refrigerators — a feature consumers might expect on their smartphone but not their kitchen appliance. The new on-screen promos arrive in a redesigned Cover screen experience, which already showcases news and weather. Critically, Samsung says owners will be able to turn off the ads, which will surely come as a relief to customers who have shelled out $1,899 to $3,499 for a premium appliance and do not want many marketing messages slapped on their refrigerator door.
What’s changing on Family Hub with the new Cover screen
The Family Hub range offers a massive touch display that can be used for calendars, photos, camera feeds and controls for connected devices. For the latest software update, Samsung has a new Cover screen widget that spins up glanceable content and “curated” promotions. The company had tested the concept in a limited release and is now making it available on additional models.
Samsung is selling the ads as part of an overall visual and AI tune-up intended to make the fridge feel more ambient and useful. When you choose to display art or an album-style theme on your door screen, ads are hidden. In other words, the marketing exists in the information widget, not from full-screen art or photo modes.
How to turn off ads on Samsung Family Hub fridges
If you’re not interested in advertisements on your fridge, there are a couple of controls.
- Dismiss particular placements when they pop up; those specific messages won’t reappear during the course of their run.
- For a worldwide opt-out, open Settings on the fridge, go to Advertisements, and then turn off the switch for Cover screen promos.
The widget will still display informational cards without ads after it’s disabled.
(And it’s worth stating that if you turned off the fridge’s Wi‑Fi, then new ads also wouldn’t load…but at the expense of core features like syncing recipes, family calendars and remote monitoring.) The built-in option is the sensible route for most homes.
Why this matters for smart home appliances
Ads in internet-connected devices are becoming more common as manufacturers look for recurring sources of revenue beyond the initial purchase. Smart TV platforms have long embraced this model, and some even put sponsored tiles on home screens that you can never delete. Applying that playbook to appliances is a newer frontier, and it has already raised alarms among consumer advocates. Ad creep and data collection diminish the value of products that otherwise command a premium price, organizations like Consumer Reports have argued.
That Samsung has made the ads opt-out by design — essentially an opt-out that you can manage yourself — is one thing that separates this rollout from some of the more aggressive iterations in other platforms. Still, history demonstrates that opt-outs can evolve over time. Streaming services and operating systems have graduated these from optional promos to default ad tiers, or fees to remove them. Owners will need to monitor how Samsung’s stance changes with software updates.
Privacy and data use for Family Hub refrigerator ads
According to product briefings from Samsung, the Family Hub ads aren’t targeted with sensitive data, and the refrigerators are not capturing personal information that could be used for ad targeting. That is a critical line in the sand for kitchen devices, where the presence of microphones and cameras — not to mention food inventory features — can rightfully raise profiling and habit concerns.
Privacy experts typically recommend double-checking permissions and household accounts for any smart appliance. Check your Samsung Account marketing preferences, decrease voice assistant integrations that don’t serve you well and revisit the settings after significant firmware upgrades. Even when an appliance isn’t in active use, where you are and what language is set in your metadata can let promotions through.
The bottom line for buyers considering Family Hub ads
For the time being, Samsung’s strategy walks a fine line: it seeks to monetize its proprietary Cover screen on the Family Hub — turning ads into targeted deals and recommendations — but lets owners opt out of that mess with just a tap. If you already have a Family Hub model, the new widget will appear after an update, and you’ll be able to turn off promos in Settings. If you’re shopping, you’ll want to take this into consideration the way you would the interface on a TV — look for an ad toggle, see what’s shown by default and make sure the software experience matches your home.
In a world of connected screens everywhere, the kitchen is the latest battlefield. The fact that Samsung is offering an opt-out may be the first possible indicator of how ads make their way into smart appliances. Whether that continues to be the case will depend on what kind of pushback there is from consumers, how much competitive pressure builds and just how much value the new screen experiences actually offer beyond what’s already mumbled in marketing.
