The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has the world’s first ‘Privacy Display’ – here’s how it works
I’m not sure anyone could have predicted how important smartphones are in our daily lives. Not just in terms of internet and texting, but also the sensitive tasks you used to do on the go. The kind of things that should be kept strictly hidden from other people.
Samsung hopes to restore some of that privacy and security with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, along with a feature called Privacy Display. It’s a clever combination of software and hardware controls that prevent onlookers from checking your phone, but without affecting your ability to see what you’re doing. Here’s how it works.
Where we’re going, we don’t need wide viewing angles
If you look at any list that explains the advantages of OLED screen technology, one of the main things you will see is that OLED displays offer much better viewing angles than the likes of LCD. That way, it doesn’t matter if you’re staring at it; you can still see what’s going on without issue.
That’s great for, say, watching Netflix or playing games. But it’s not so helpful for those times when you’re using a mobile banking app or typing passwords into your online accounts. You don’t want people to see what’s happening on your screen, because there have been several notable cases where this so-called “shoulder surfing” has led to hackers gaining full access to people’s phones and bank accounts.
Privacy Display essentially disables this OLED feature, and cuts off those side viewing angles for everyone but you. This means that, if any eavesdropper tries to sneak a look at your phone screen, they will see a black screen. It’s like one of those privacy-based screen protectors you can buy, but built into the phone at the pixel level.
All this time you are looking directly at your phone, and you get to see the contents of your screen without any problem. In fact, until you try to tilt your phone to the other side, you won’t even notice that the Privacy Screen is on.
The technical explanation is that turning on Privacy Display reduces the light emitted from each pixel on the display using a dark matrix. A little light reaches you, but not the people lurking on the side.
Again, it’s not an all-or-nothing situation, as smaller light pixels can work alongside wider light pixels. This means that Privacy Display can be activated on some parts of the screen, but not others. Giving you the ability to control what shoulder surfers may be able to see.
Watch it open
You choose how much is hidden
In my short time with the Galaxy S26 Ultra I noticed that the default Privacy display mode doesn’t dim everything on the screen. It’s enough to hide what’s going on, but a keen observer might get an idea of what’s going on.
So Samsung added an “Advanced Privacy Protection” mode that cranks up the Privacy Screen to 11. Turn it on and anyone looking at your phone from the wrong angle will see a completely blank screen, with absolutely no clues as to what you’re doing. It’s not clear if that will affect the user view, such as a dim display, but I didn’t notice any meaningful difference.
The Privacy Screen can be turned on manually, if you need it. The easiest way to do this is to use the Quick Settings toggle, which will quickly open the Privacy Screen. Or you can double press the side key to have the same effect. However, it is possible to do this process automatically and turn on the privacy display if you are doing more sensitive things.
Examples given by Samsung include banking applications, emails, notifications at any time they appear, text messages and any type of confirmation screen. That helps protect people from seeing passwords, PINs or other sensitive information you’d like to keep to yourself.
And while this is the kind of feature you might not have thought you’d need, it’s definitely one we can all benefit from.
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