Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra's new Privacy Display feature needs to be on every phone

Samsung announced its new S26 lineup on Wednesday, and with it a few notable features. Right now, my favorite is the new Privacy Display feature that's only available on the S26 Ultra.

Ben Schoon on 9to5Google:

The core idea behind Privacy Display on the Galaxy S26 Ultra is to hide what’s on your display from those around you, and it does that in a similar way to the privacy screen protectors that have been around for years. But, unlike those screen protectors, this is baked directly into the display.

You have my attention.

This part really impressed me, as Privacy Display is able to specifically hide only that singular portion of the display, and it does so nearly perfectly. The masking around the notification ensures the content behind isn’t affected, and the effect works incredibly well.

So with just a toggle, you can effectively hide any incoming alerts or notifications, or set the feature to only trigger when you open specific apps to keep prying eyes from seeing potentially private information on your screen.

When you catch someone spying on your screen in public – especially a complete stranger – it feels like a total violation of your privacy. This feature fixes that, and it's baked in out of the box.

9to5Google published a slideshow and video showing the feature in action, which Schoon says looks better in person than it does in photos.

I love the idea of this feature, and all reports so far indicate that it works as well as Samsung has promised.

Hopefully we see phone makers adopt similar tech across the board faster than Android OEMs have adopted Apple's MagSafe, which debuted in 2020 (and Samsung's own devices still lack).