The Samsung S26’s New “privacy Display” Will Make Third-Party Privacy Screens Obsolete.
I have a bad habit, and you probably do too: when someone opens their phone near me, I instinctively look. I don’t intentionally look for anything—my eyes involuntarily glide over the screen, lingering for a moment before I reciprocate—but I’ve seen everything from innocuous wallpapers to lock codes, bank statements, and text messages during relationship arguments.
I’m not a nosy person and don’t worry too much about my privacy when it becomes too inconvenient. But the most common form of privacy invasion is probably the simplest: looking at someone’s phone screen or someone looking at yours.
A few years ago, I protected my privacy with screen protectors on my laptop and phone, but I’d neglected this practice so much that I’d almost forgotten they even existed. Today, at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked presentation, the company unveiled the screen protector I’ve always wanted.
Samsung’s new Privacy Display feature lets you narrow the area of the pixel lights on your phone’s screen so that only you can see them. This feature can be toggled on and off, and customized for each app individually, allowing some apps to be visible to others while sensitive apps like your banking app or an HBO series remain invisible. When Privacy Display is off, the pixels are visible from any angle, but when it’s on, the pixel lights are narrowed to just you. Essentially, you can control when you want people to see your phone over your shoulder, which is likely less common than when you prefer to protect your phone from side angles. Privacy Display will be available on the new Galaxy S26 Ultra, but it’s so useful that it was the most exciting announcement at Galaxy Unpacked. Once competitors catch on, I expect the built-in privacy screen to become standard in smartphones. It’s not hard to imagine third-party privacy screens becoming obsolete.
After expensive device upgrades and a long list of accessories, adding a screen protector can seem like a waste of money . To save a few dollars, I simply tell myself I’ll be more aware of my surroundings. And yet, just yesterday on the subway, I noticed an innocuous wallpaper featuring Shadow the Hedgehog, followed by personal, potentially embarrassing app notifications. In reality, other people have probably glimpsed similar information on my phone, no matter how “mindful of my surroundings” I hope to be.
For now, the new Privacy Display feature is only available on the new Galaxy S26 Ultra, which starts at $1,299. Hopefully, it will be rolled out more widely, including to the cheaper S26, which starts at $899, and the S26+, which starts at $1,099. I don’t know why it took phone makers so long to create such a useful tool, but I think it’s due to the clumsy implementation of AI in features I’ll rarely use. Samsung Unpacked was full of clumsy AI announcements—you should check out the longer list of such announcements —but the simple functionality of Privacy Display overshadowed everything else. And better late than never.