Samsung upgrades Galaxy S26 Ultra's best feature – privacy display gets better and better
Keep that video away from prying eyes
Quick Summary
Samsung is bringing Privacy Display to picture-in-picture video, so if you leave a video app you want protected, the video will be obscured, but the rest of the phone wont.
The new feature is expected to arrive with One UI 9 on Samsung's flagship phone.
Privacy Display made its headlines at the launch of the Galaxy S26 Ultra and it looks like Samsung is boosting its features in a forthcoming software update.
The clever feature that's exclusive to Samsung's flagship Galaxy S phone works by limiting the light output to narrow pixels, limiting the viewing angle of the display. That means that only those right in front of the screen can see what's on it and those to one side can't.
It appears that Samsung is now going to expand the use of the feature to cover another use case, with Privacy Display working on picture-in-picture video too.
That means that if you're watching something that you want to keep private and you leave the source app, the floating miniature version of that video will remain obscured to those spying on your screen. The rest of the display becomes visible as normal.
Heads up! Samsung has introduced a very useful upgrade to the Privacy Display feature on the Galaxy S26 Ultra in One UI 9.For example, if you've enabled Privacy Display only for YouTube, when you minimize the video into Picture in Picture (PiP) and return to the home screen,… pic.twitter.com/ck1IqxUppoJuly 21, 2026
Previously, if you left the app, the entire phone would stay in Privacy Display because part of that app was still open.
To get it to work you firstly need app support for picture-in-picture video. That list includes some big hitters like YouTube and Netflix, but it also extends to WhatsApp, Zoom and Google Meet, which is where you might have more sensitive video that you want to keep private.
When these apps are playing video, swiping back to the home screen minimises the video to a floating picture-in-picture window, which will then benefit from being private.
There are a couple of things you'd have to ensure to get this to work: first, you'll have to have selected the individual apps that you want Privacy Display to work on. Second, you'll have to ensure you're not using Privacy Display across the entire screen, in which case it would all be private all the time.
It's an interesting move and if you don't want that person next to you on the train watching your videos, this could potentially be useful.
The feature is reportedly included in beta One UI 9 software, according to 9to5Google, so once the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is out of the way, we're sure this will be heading the S26 Ultra in an update.
