Samsung finally fixes the Galaxy S26 Ultra's most annoying Privacy Display flaw

What you need to know

• Samsung fixes a major Privacy Display annoyance by limiting the privacy effect to the PiP window instead of the entire screen in One UI 9 Beta 4.
• The update allows you to watch PiP videos privately while the rest of the display stays bright and fully visible.
• The update also removes unnecessary dimming and color shifts across the whole display during PiP playback.

One of the biggest differentiators of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is Samsung’s Privacy Display, but it has also been a source of an annoying tradeoff. If you shrunk a video into a picture-in-picture (PiP) window, the privacy effect continued covering the entire display, making everything else on the screen dimmer and harder to see. The latest One UI 9 beta finally turns that on its head.

According to a video shared by reliable leaker Ice Universe, One UI 9 Beta 4 makes Privacy Display much smarter when using PiP apps. The display angle restriction is no longer applied to the entire display but is still restricted to the floating PiP window. Then you can continue watching YouTube videos or another PiP app without showing it to people around you, while using the rest of your phone normally.

This change fixes a real usability bug. Samsung’s Flex Magic Pixel technology is built right into the Galaxy S26 Ultra screen, limiting viewing angles to make the display unreadable from the side. Unlike a traditional privacy screen protector, it can be enabled only for specific apps, notifications, or password entry. The downside is it also dims the brightness and shifts colors while it's active, so having it cover the whole screen during PiP playback felt a bit too limiting.

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With the new behavior, only the sensitive content within the PiP window is shielded, and the rest of the interface is displayed at normal viewing angles and brightness. The enhancement is part of One UI 9 Beta 4, which also delivers a variety of bug fixes in preparation for Samsung’s wider One UI 9 release.

Android Central's Take

This appears to be a fix for a problem that should never have existed in the first place. A privacy feature is only useful if it doesn’t get in the way of using your phone, and covering the whole screen just to protect a tiny PiP window always felt like overkill. This change finally allows Privacy Display to work as I would expect it to from day one. Now Samsung just needs to polish the experience, rather than leaving it to beta users to clean up the rough edges of features it proudly marketed as ready for flagships.