Xiaomi's Smart Privacy Display Leaks, and It Looks Smarter Than Expected

Samsung brought Privacy Display to the Galaxy S26 Ultra this year and it came as a huge hit. Now Xiaomi is working on its own version. A new leak shows a feature called Smart Privacy Display, which could arrive with the Xiaomi 18 series. It can hide parts of your screen from people around you, but Xiaomi also has a few ideas of its own.

The goal is simple. Xiaomi wants to stop people next to you from seeing private things on your phone. This could be a message, a password or even your bank details.

Smart Privacy Display can make the screen harder to see from the side. This is useful on a train, plane or anywhere else where people are close to you. Samsung already does something similar with the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Xiaomi, however, will let you choose where you want to use it. You can turn it on for certain apps or create groups of apps that need more privacy. For example, you could protect WhatsApp and your banking apps while keeping the screen normal when you open YouTube.

The same can be done with notifications. This means someone sitting next to you shouldn't be able to read a private message when it appears on your screen.

There is also a feature called Page privacy display. This one can turn on when the phone finds something private on the screen. It could be a password box, a payment page, a money transfer or a private message. Once you leave that page, the display can go back to normal.

I think this is the better way to use a privacy screen. You don't need to hide your display when watching a video. But when you open your bank app on a busy train? That's a very different story.

One detail in the leak caught my attention. Xiaomi calls this "hardware-level privacy." That tells us the company may use special screen hardware instead of a simple software effect.

Samsung uses its display hardware to change how much of the Galaxy S26 Ultra screen you can see from the side. Xiaomi may be doing something close to that. HyperOS could then control when the feature turns on and which apps can use it.

There are a few limits. Smart Privacy Display won't work when the phone is in landscape mode. Battery Saver can also turn it off, while some third-party themes may cause issues on the lock screen.

The good news is that the leaked feature was found on a Global HyperOS ROM. This is a strong sign that Xiaomi plans to bring it to phones outside China as well. Some parts are still China-only, though, so we may not get every option at launch.

The Xiaomi 18 Pro and Xiaomi 18 Pro Max are expected to be the first phones with Smart Privacy Display. Xiaomi hasn't said anything about it yet, so this is still a leak.

Samsung was first with this type of screen, but Xiaomi's idea makes sense. Instead of keeping Privacy Display on all day, your phone could turn it on only when there is something you don't want other people to see.