Spoilers on PS5 come from more places than most players expect. The obvious culprits are social media and YouTube, but Sony's own interface can give the game away too. Trophy notifications can reveal late-game characters. Activity cards show mission names you haven't unlocked. The "What's New" feed surfaces clips from your friends' sessions, sometimes mid-cutscene. If you care about experiencing a story fresh, a few deliberate settings changes will save you a lot of frustration.
Where PS5 actually leaks spoilers
The trophy system is the most common offender. By default, PS5 displays a trophy notification in the top-right corner the moment it unlocks, including the trophy's name and icon. Many developers name late-game trophies after boss characters, plot twists, or endings. A single glance at the wrong moment can flatten the impact of a reveal you've been building toward for 20 hours.
Activity cards are subtler. Sony's activity system surfaces recommended next steps for games you're playing, and it sometimes pulls descriptions of objectives you haven't reached yet. If you've just started a game, opening the control centre can expose chapter names or quest titles that the developer clearly intended as surprises.
The "What's New" feed on the home screen pulls clips and screenshots shared by friends. There's no opt-out filter for spoiler content. If a friend posts a screenshot of a major story beat, it can appear in your feed unprompted.
How to reduce trophy spoilers
Go to Settings, then Notifications, then Trophies. You have three options worth adjusting. First, disable "Show Trophy Unlock Notifications" entirely, or set them to appear only when you press the PlayStation button rather than as automatic pop-ups. Second, under "Trophy Notifications", you can choose to hide the trophy image, which removes the icon that sometimes gives away characters or scenes. Third, on the trophy list itself, Sony introduced a spoiler-blur toggle for individual games. If a developer has tagged their trophies with a spoiler flag, those entries appear blurred until you manually reveal them. Not every studio uses this feature, but first-party Sony titles including God of War Ragnarök and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 have applied it consistently.
The PS5 trophy system carries more social weight than casual players realise. Trophy names and descriptions feed directly into your profile's public activity, so a locked trophy with a revealing name can be seen by friends even before you've earned it.
Silencing activity cards
Activity cards can't be turned off completely, but their reach can be limited. In Settings, go to Saved Data and Game/App Settings, then Game Presets. Setting "Activities" visibility to "None" means the card area shows your recent games without expanding into suggested objectives. The trade-off is losing useful hints for games where you want them. A workable middle ground: turn the setting off at the start of a narrative game and re-enable it once you've finished.
Some games also let you configure spoiler protection from inside the game itself. Persona 5 Royal, for instance, asks during setup whether you want to restrict online features that could reveal story progression. It's worth checking a game's own settings menu before assuming the console handles it.
Controlling the "What's New" feed
The "What's New" feed is harder to tame. You can mute specific friends temporarily, which stops their clips appearing, but there's no topic-based filter. Your best option is navigating directly to the game you want to play from the home screen rather than scrolling the feed. You can also rearrange your home screen so games you're actively playing sit in the first row, reducing the chance you'll accidentally scroll past a friend's spoiler clip.
Sony's share settings let you restrict what your own sessions broadcast, which is worth setting up if you play ahead of friends who want to catch up. Under Settings, Users and Accounts, then Privacy Settings, you can limit who sees your game activity, clips, and trophies.
Online features and spoiler risk
Some PS5 games integrate asynchronous online features that pull in data from other players' sessions: messages left in the world, ratings on enemy placements, or hints about what lies ahead. FromSoftware games use this extensively. These features are almost always optional. If you want a clean playthrough, disable online features in the game's own settings before starting. You can re-enable them on a second run.
PS5 game streaming also carries spoiler risk if you're watching someone else's session before finishing your own. The state of PS5 game streaming has matured significantly, making it easier than ever to watch a full playthrough passively, which is worth being deliberate about if you're mid-game and tempted to watch a friend continue ahead of you.
Managing the PlayStation App
The PlayStation App on iOS and Android mirrors the "What's New" feed and surfaces trophy notifications to your phone. If you've silenced trophy pop-ups on the console but left the app on default, you can still receive notifications there. Open the app, go to the notification settings, and disable trophy alerts. The app also shows friends' recent games and clips, so the same social spoiler risk exists on mobile.
One genuinely useful app feature: you can view your trophy list privately before playing, with spoiler-blur enabled where developers have applied it. This lets you check whether a game has opted into Sony's spoiler protection before you start, so you know whether to adjust your settings or go in fully blind.
A note on first-party vs third-party support
Sony's spoiler-blur trophy feature depends entirely on developers opting in. First-party studios use it well. Third-party support is inconsistent: major publishers like Square Enix and Capcom have applied it to some titles but not others. Smaller indie releases rarely implement it. Before starting any narrative game you care about, check the trophy list quickly. If entries are blurred, you're protected. If they're fully visible, treat the list as off-limits until you finish.
The spoiler problem on PS5 isn't solved by any single setting. It takes a few deliberate choices across notifications, activity cards, the PlayStation App, and individual game options. Five minutes of setup at the start of a major release is a reasonable investment against ruining something you've been looking forward to for months.