What you need to know
- Xiaomi has confirmed the Xiaomi 18 Pro will feature a hardware-based smart privacy display similar to Samsung’s.
- The screen will remain clearly visible from the front, while side brightness reportedly drops to around 1% beyond 60 degrees.
- Privacy protection will also be able to work with specific lock screen notifications as well as floating windows.
Xiaomi has already confirmed that the Xiaomi 18 series is arriving very soon with a magical rear display. And now, the company has revealed another major feature coming to its new flagship smartphone lineup.
Similar to the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Xiaomi has confirmed that the Xiaomi 18 Pro will feature a new smart privacy display. For those who don’t remember, Samsung introduced Privacy Display with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, which uses the display hardware itself to make it difficult for people looking from the sides to see what’s on your screen. And now, Xiaomi is bringing similar technology to the Xiaomi 18 Pro.
In a teaser posted on Weibo, Xiaomi confirmed that the Xiaomi 18 Pro will ship with what it calls a smart privacy screen. Similar to Samsung’s implementation, the privacy effect is built into the display itself rather than relying on software or a third-party privacy screen protector.
When the mode is active, the person directly in front of the phone will still be able to see the display properly, while someone looking from the side will instead see a much darker, nearly black screen.
But Xiaomi claims it’s going one step further than Samsung here. One downside of Samsung’s Privacy Display is that enabling the feature also makes the screen look slightly dimmer for the person directly using the phone. Xiaomi says its implementation won’t compromise normal front-on viewing when the privacy feature is enabled.
Once you move beyond a 60-degree viewing angle, Xiaomi says the side brightness drops to roughly 1%, making the display appear almost completely black to anyone trying to look from the side.
(Image credit: Xiaomi / Weibo)
Similar to Samsung, Xiaomi is also building software controls around when the privacy mode kicks in. For example, Xiaomi’s implementation can automatically protect specific notifications on the lock screen, while the feature will also work with floating windows.
Thankfully, we won’t have to wait much longer to see how well the technology actually works. The Xiaomi 18 series is set to launch in just a few days, so we should learn much more about the smart privacy display soon.
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